The "3 Ps" of EmPowerment, Partnership and Protection - Stakeholder Perceptions of Beneficial Outcomes of Engagement in HIV Prevention Trials

Stakeholder engagement is increasingly recognized as a key component of ethical research in leading ethics guidelines. Ethics commentators have also argued that engagement has several beneficial outcomes for the field. This paper reports on the beneficial outcomes of stakeholder engagement in HIV prevention trials as perceived by stakeholders in the field. We conducted 28 interviews between 2019 and 2021 with interviewees from various stakeholder groups in 12 countries and used thematic analysis to analyze the transcripts. We found three major themes - namely where engagement is perceived to empower stakeholders, where engagement is perceived to build equitable relationships and where engagement is perceived to strengthen protections for participants and community stakeholders and to improve science. These findings map closely onto beneficial outcomes envisaged by ethics guidelines, however, the relationship between outcomes seen as beneficial deserves further exploration.