A Systematic Review of Intervention Studies That Address HIV-Related Stigmas Among US Healthcare Workers and Health Systems: Applying a Theory-Based Ontology to Link Intervention Types, Techniques, and Mechanisms of Action to Potential Effectiveness.

This article systematically reviews interventions aimed at reducing HIV-related stigma among healthcare workers and healthcare systems in the USA by analyzing their theory-based components using a transtheoretical ontology from the Human Behaviour Change Project. It identifies common intervention types (ITs), behavior change techniques (BCTs), and mechanisms of action (MOAs) across 28 studies, finding that "Persuasion" as an IT, "Behavioral practice/rehearsal" and "Salience of consequences" as BCTs, and "Knowledge" and "Beliefs about capabilities" as MOAs showed the highest potential effectiveness in experimental studies. Most interventions combined multiple ITs, BCTs, and MOAs, primarily focused on individual-level stigma reduction through education and training, with limited attention to intersectional or structural approaches addressing systemic power dynamics. The review highlights gaps in study design quality, theoretical articulation, long-term outcome assessment, and reporting detail, recommending future research to employ more rigorous, theory-driven methods that consider structural factors to better mitigate HIV-related stigma in healthcare settings.