HPVAX

   I was responsible for making the budget as part of the action plan and it was quite challenging. I didn’t realize how much research and money goes into turning just one communication tactic into a reality. One of the more interesting parts of designing the budget for me was budgeting for the ad Maya designed to be played on three dating apps: Grindr, Tinder, and Bumble, because I really had no idea what goes into creating an animated advertisement or how to advertise on dating apps. It felt shocking that just a one minute long video would cost thousands of dollars to have professionally drawn and animated which could make it potentially very prohibitive for a smaller organization to produce. However, I definitely appreciated how transparent the vendor I focused on was with their pricing scale and available animation options. Many other vendors I researched required you to reach out in order to receive a quote for your project rather than providing an estimate up front based...

 Welcome to our blog: HPVAX which stands for Harlem Partners for Vaccination, Action & Examination. This blog is run by 5 students at Columbia's Mailman School of Public Health: Holly, Sarah, Maya, Morgan & Johanna as part of our class project for our Health Communication Course. We are creating a comprehensive communication plan to address the high incidence of HPV-related oropharyngeal cancer among men aged 18-26 who have sex with men  in Harlem. We hope to do this by encouraging HPV vaccination and other prevention measures. While men aged 18-26 who have sex with men are our primary group we also are trying to reach 3 secondary groups because in order for behavior change to occur there needs to be other levels of social, emotional, and practical support in place. Our secondary groups are: sexual partners, pharmacists, and health care providers because all of these groups play a key role in influencing the behavior of our target population.  This blog is a journ...

We have now gotten to the action (tactical) plan phase of this project. The action plan is when you get to take all your research, planning and objective and come up with an actionable, feasible and strategic plan for all of the communication messages, materials, activities, channels and so on that you would like to use on the key audiences for your communications program. For our communications program HPVAX we are looking to build awareness and increase the number of men who have sex with men (MSM) in Harlem to get the HPV vaccines and have protected sex to diminish the spread of HPV and oral cancers. One of the key secondary groups we want to target with our program are sexual partners. Sexual partners are such an important group to target for this program as they have such an influence on the primary group- 18–26-year-old MSM in Harlem. Research shows that MSM perceptions of condom use are primarily shaped by social norms and their interactions with sexual partners. If sexual partn...

Communication is one of the essential components of our human existence: we use it every day.  Verbal or nonverbal, in written or spoken words, in our gestures, our actions, in the way we express ourselves or don’t. It seems like we’re communication naturals. But are we really? Our journey through the health communication world has made me think about how messages work and how we relate to them. Have you also noticed that sometimes, different strategies are needed to convince differen t people of the same thing? That, while you might be more likely to consider adopting a healthy habit if you’re reading about its benefits, others will be more easily convinced to change their behavior if they're made aware of the risk of not doing so? People are different in the way they react to how messages are presented. One of my main takeaways of this course is related to this phenomenon. The seemingly intuitive act of using different appeals to communicate one particular issue actually has a na...

Tackling the incidence of preventable HPV-caused oropharyngeal cancer Promoting the HPV vaccine and preventive measures among 18- to 26-year-old MSM in Harlem, New York City HPV (Human Papillomavirus) is the main factor (70%) causing oropharyngeal cancer. It is sexually transmitted.  10% of men and 3.6% of women are orally infected. Cancer develops years after infection. Every year, 20,839 people in the U.S. are diagnosed with oropharyngeal cancer. Around 14,800 are probably caused by HPV (four-fold increase over the past decade).  Primary audience: 18-26 year-old MSM living in Harlem who are unvaccinated against HPV Adult MSM are at elevated risk of HPV (and HIV). HPV is more than 50% prevalent in all MSM in the US. - Men in the 18-26 age group are eligible, but undervaccinated compared to their female and adolescent counterparts. - Harlem has a higher percentage of 18-26 year olds than the rest of Manhattan - HPV prevalence and vaccination status in Harlem MSM are understud...

The first tool we created for our primary population was a dating app advertisement for our blog/website, where we would post information and resources about safe sex. The above video is just a draft, but in creating it, I thought a lot about what kinds of images would be relatable in context for people potentially with multiple sexual partners (or even those who don't, but still have the app downloaded). It was difficult to get the animation to a place where it was visually compelling, but the idea is that this advertisement would appear in the same format as someone's dating profile, and the message is to "swipe left" (reject) someone practicing unsafe sex, not using a condom, and that you should "swipe right" (attempt to "match" with) on those who do use condoms. "It's a match!" lights up the screen, resulting in a message that safe is sexy, and that you can visit our site to learn more about the campaign "Swipe Right on Safe ...

I found our first assignment, the situation and audience analysis, to be a thorough way to better understand the primary audience’s needs and how to best tailor communication strategies to specific groups. Our group chose to tackle the incidence of preventable HPV-caused oropharyngeal cancer in 18- to 26-year-old men who have sex with men (MSM) in Harlem. Our communication plan aimed to promote the HPV vaccine and other preventive measures among our primary audience. HPV prevention in men is rarely discussed within the public, so i have learned a lot over the course of this project.          A challenge we faced was narrowing down our audience enough to make our project impactful. Because adolescent girls and young women are heavily encouraged to get the Gardasil vaccine and get screened for cervical cancer, we knew we wanted to focus on men, a less targeted population. Because there has been little research done in HPV among men, we had to get creative in ...

For this project I’ve done a lot of research into existing programs and resources related to HPV related oropharyngeal cancer in men who have sex with men and it has really opened my eyes to how largely ignored this issue has been. While it was easy to find resources and programs aimed at preventing cervical cancer in women it took a lot of digging to find resources and programs specific to men. In the end I was really only able to find programs, coalitions and resources aimed at HPV-related cancer prevention more broadly. I was excited to see how many great coalitions and projects are currently working to prevent HPV-related cancers in both men and women such as, NYSDOH’s Cancer Prevention in Action , New York State HPV Coalition , and Mission: HPV Cancer Free . Additionally, many of the resources I found called attention to oropharyngeal cancer increasing among men and being the most prevalent HPV-related cancer among men.  However, it was still difficult to find resources that c...

10/19/2022, 11:00 AM Getting to talk to a family medicine practitioner was an extraordinarily helpful way to kick off developing our health communication plan, which we have called HPVAX. HPVAX stands for Harlem Partners for Vaccination, Action, and eXamination, and aims to tackle the incidence of preventable HPV-caused oropharyngeal cancer by promoting the HPV vaccine and preventative measures among 18- to 26-year-old men who have sex with men (MSM) in Harlem, New York City.  Dr. Richman started by affirming to us that the 18-26 age group is notable because young adult men simply don't visit the doctor as much as men of other ages or their female counterparts. Health maintenance, especially sexual wellness, spurs women of any age to visit the gynecologist, for example, or seek contraceptives. Among men, Dr. Richman commented that general health maintenance was difficult because there aren't as many explicit asks for young adult men to visit the doctor regularly. For those who...