Comprehensive at-home sexually transmitted and blood borne infection (STBBI) testing program: A pilot study
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background Rates of sexually transmitted and blood borne infections (STBBI) are rapidly increasing. Despite the high diagnostic accuracy of self-testing, no fully remote STBBI testing programs are available in Canada. We aimed to evaluate the feasibility and acceptability of a fully-remote, web-based, at-home STBBI testing (self-collection) program in Calgary, Canada. Methods Participants who were Alberta residents aged ≥16 years self-enrolled into a web-based platform between February 2023 and March 2024 and completed consent and intake questionnaires consisting of demographic and sexual health data. Kits were mailed, and samples were self-collected including swabs, urine and dried blood spot cards. Results of processed kits were communicated securely to participants. Surveys to assess the feasibility and acceptability of the process were completed. Results Of the 156 participants (39.7% men, 37.3 ± 10.5 years) from diverse sex and gender backgrounds who completed the intake, 43% ( n = 67) participants returned their testing kits. In the cohort, there was low reported condom use in more than 50%, and 40% had not had STBBI testing in the past 12 months. There were six participants (9.0%) with new positive tests for an STBBI and all were connected with appropriate treatment. Participants largely reported satisfaction with the web-based platform and testing process as well as ease with testing modalities with the except for dried blood spot testing which presented collection challenges. Conclusions Our web-based comprehensive testing pilot was feasible and acceptable, demonstrating the value of such remote approaches to diminishing the threat of rising STBBI rates.
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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 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.001 |
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".