Study variables
Sociodemographic and HIV-related variables were extracted from the questionnaire administered during the repeat home-based visit closest to referral. For a given date, we considered the closest documented value. For the cases where a characteristic of a participant was not documented at any point, multifactorial analysis was used to impute missing socio-demographic with the In addition, we considered “HIV care status at referral”, classified into four categories: (i) newly diagnosed (positive rapid HIV test through HBHCT, not self-reported HIV-positive and not in the ACCDB database at the date of first home-based referral); (ii) already diagnosed but never accessed DoH care (self-reported HIV-positive, not in the ACCDB database before the date of first home-based referral); (iii) already accessed DoH care but considered lost-to-follow-up (LTFU) with the last contact with DoH clinics more than 24 months prior the first home-based referral; or (iv) LTFU with the last contact with DoH clinics in the previous 13–24 months.