By: Ann K. Avery, MD, Infectious Disease Physician at MetroHealth Medical Center
From its beginning in 2015, our vision for Positive Peers has always been to make it easier for Young People Living with HIV (YPLWH) to learn, connect, communicate, and support each other in one place. Today people across the U.S. rely on Positive Peers for peer support and to achieve their wellness goals.
We have been listening to our Community Advisory Board, made up of YPLWH, current users, and Key Health Partners for feedback. Their input has resulted in a redesign of Positive Peers from the ground up. The new app is built on a foundation of quick connection and interaction. We have streamlined the user experience to make it simple to use and easy to find everything in one place. These enhancements also provide the foundation for additional updates in the near future, such as commenting on articles and favoriting your people.
While we have always been making minor improvements in the existing app, the most significant breakthrough will be the launch of the new Positive Peers 2.0 version.
The app will automatically update on August 15, 2023.
Users only need to log into the app with their username and password to gain immediate access to the new version (if you have your apps set to automatically update – if you don’t, then just go to the app store and find Positive Peers and click the available update on or after August 15th).
Below is a summary of the most significant improvements.
The new Positive Peers: Easy to use, conversational, and rewarding
Easy to use
We always seek ways to provide our users with an easy, yet feature-rich experience. That's why we are excited to roll out enhancements that make it simple to connect with others, respond to posts, locate key health partners, and find information–with fewer clicks.
Every activity is right at your fingertips from the home page: scroll through our positive notes, your current chats, our recent articles, community posts, and upcoming events.
To achieve this, we have made a ground-up investment to overhaul the platform to improve forums and chat and to create additional opportunities for conversation. We are by no means done optimizing Positive Peers and have already received positive feedback from our testing group.
Conversational
In Positive Peers 2.0, Forum Posts and Private Chats are viewable on the home screen. Dive into chats and find Key Health Partners pinned at the top for quick and easy access. Swipe through the Forum Posts, see who is in the app in real-time, and respond to posts or give a thumbs up.
Interactivity is vital because it helps engage and involve our users, providing a more immersive and personalized experience. By allowing our users to participate and interact with content, we can make their experience more impactful. Users can quickly give someone a "like" on a post to show support. That little interaction goes such a long way. It is a quick way for users to show approval and encouragement for each other.
Rewarding
Positive Peers 2.0 will now include badges, rewarding users for positive behaviors, and reaching milestones. Upon launch, our current users will have already earned their first–and rarest badge–the Founders Badge. Users only acquire this badge by being a member of App 1.0. Additional badges are awarded to welcome new members and to celebrate med streaks.
Our Wellness Tracker has been extensively modified to help encourage weekly wellness goals based on our mind, body, and spirit mantra. Users automatically receive wellness points for interactions within the app–reading blogs, posting in the forum, and confirming they took their meds. These activities are celebrated with a popup, and then points are added to the user's Wellness Tracker.
Achievements are presented via a weekly visual graph on the home screen and a historical record of the points earned over time so users can visually see their progress.
Get started today
Today marks the new era of Positive Peers, and we are here to be your support group.
We thank our users and Key Health Partners for using Positive Peers. We are thrilled to introduce an easier, conversational, and more rewarding app starting today. We encourage you to try it out, consider joining our community, and provide feedback on what is helping you get the most out of Positive peers.
Download Positive Peers from the Apple Store or Google Play. Please register here to gain access to our entire community.
