On 7-8 June 2017, in London, UK, several members of IPVS were presenting at a symposium on building trust and managing risk in HPV vaccination, a successful collaboration between the Vaccine Confidence Project (London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine) and the HPV Prevention and Control Board, a non-profit organization to promote worldwide preventive strategies against HPV related disease.
With over 150 participants and over 300 on-line viewers, the symposium was a great success. The presentations and posters provided a comprehensive overview of the status and challenges of implementation of HPV vaccination programs, vaccination uptake and the role of the (social) media in various countries.
During the breakout sessions various lessons from the field were discussed. The reflections and insights gathered at the symposium, have given the HPV Prevention and Control Board renewed inspiration to enhance our role in generating evidence to support countries in their HPV vaccine program implementation and responding in a proactive way to concerns about adverse events that might mitigate their negative impact.
Symposium sessions covered topics related to:
- The state of HPV vaccination in the world
- HPV vaccination: real and perceived safety issues
- Culture, religion and morality around HPV vaccination
- Immunization anxiety reactions and the HPV vaccine
- Engaging and communicating with different audiences
- Strategies to monitor, build and maintain confidence
Objectives of the sessions:
- To examine challenges in HPV vaccine introduction, including the degree of preparedness of all concerned parties to introduce a vaccine into pre-adolescent and adolescent populations
- To review country experiences of HPV vaccine introduction and perspectives on overcoming challenges
- To explore the ramifications of adolescence and health
- To look at monitoring public confidence in immunization programs (the Vaccine Confidence Project)
- To discuss the role and monitoring of the media and listening to social media
- To consider ways of engaging and communicating with different audiences, including the management of misperceptions and misinformation and overcoming the consequent vaccine hesitancy
All materials from the meeting, including slides from the presentations and summarizing illustrations are available HERE.
