Designing a Pro-Equity HPV Vaccine Delivery Program for Girls Who Have Dropped Out of School: Community Perspectives From Uttar Pradesh, India

India experiences a substantial burden of cervical cancer and accounts for nearly one third of cervical cancer deaths worldwide. While human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccines have been introduced subnationally in some states, HPV has not yet been rolled out nationally. Given the target age group, school...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Health promotion practice 2022-11, Vol.23 (6), p.1039-1049
Main Authors: Holroyd, Taylor A., Yan, Shirley D., Srivastava, Vineet, Srivastava, Ashish, Wahl, Brian, Morgan, Christopher, Kumar, Somesh, Yadav, Amit K., Jennings, Mary Carol
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adolescent girls
Cervical cancer
Community
Girls
Human papillomavirus
Immunization
School attendance
Teenagers
Vaccines
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:India experiences a substantial burden of cervical cancer and accounts for nearly one third of cervical cancer deaths worldwide. While human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccines have been introduced subnationally in some states, HPV has not yet been rolled out nationally. Given the target age group, schools are the most common delivery channel for HPV vaccines, but this fails to account for local girls who never attended or no longer attend school. We conducted a qualitative, design-informed, community-based study conducted in Uttar Pradesh, India. We assessed facilitators and barriers among out-of-school girls and proposed program characteristics to inform the design of pro-equity HPV vaccine delivery programs for out-of-school girls. Programs should improve parental knowledge of the risk of cervical cancer, engage vaccinated girls as vaccine champions, utilize varied media options for low-literacy populations, and ensure that HPV vaccine services are accessible and flexible to accommodate out-of-school girls. In areas with poor or irregular school attendance among adolescent girls, HPV vaccine coverage will remain suboptimal until programs can effectively address their needs and reach this priority population. Our findings present a meaningful opportunity for program planners to purposefully design HPV vaccination programs according to these parameters, rather than modifying existing programs to include HPV vaccine. Adolescent girls, their parents, and other community members should be involved in program design to ensure that the program can effectively meet the needs of adolescent girls who are not in school.
ISSN:1524-8399
1552-6372
DOI:10.1177/15248399211046611