P331 Acceptability of alternative sexual health service delivery methods during the COVID-19 pandemic in British Columbia (BC), Canada
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, sexual health services have started to implement alternative service delivery methods that reduce in-person contact (e.g., telemedicine, virtual health). We sought to understand acceptability of alternative service delivery methods among sexual health service clients in BC, Canada. Methods We used data from an online anonymous survey administered from 21/07/2020–04/08/2020 to clients (aged ≥16 years) who had used the BC Centre for Disease Control’s sexually-transmitted infection (STI) clinic and/or the GetCheckedOnline testing service in the year prior to COVID-19 public health responses (03/2020). We described participants’ likelihood of using potential alternative sexual health service delivery methods, and conducted bivariate analysis to examine its association with experiencing any sexual health service access barriers during the pandemic. Results Of the 1198 survey participants (aged 17–76 years), 48% identified as men, 47% as women, and 5% as another gender; 71% identified as White, 24% as racialized minorities, and 4% as Indigenous. Overall, support for using alternative STI testing models was high, with 88% likely to use at-home self-collection kits and 79% likely to use an express testing model (i.e., phone/video triage prior to specimen collection at a clinic). More participants were likely to discuss sexual health with a healthcare provider over the phone (64%), compared with video visits (53%) and text (49%). Text messaging to receive STI test results and reminders were of high interest (71% and 63% likely to use, respectively). Likelihood of using alternative service delivery methods did not differ by participants’ experience of access barriers, where 66% of total participants reported having avoided/delayed seeking services during 03/2020–07/2020. Conclusion Likelihood of using potential alternative sexual health service delivery methods was high overall, including among participants who did not avoid/delay seeking services. Sustaining and expanding such services would facilitate access during and beyond the COVID-19 pandemic.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.011 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.007 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.006 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".