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About Us & HPVAX

 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 journal of sorts for our group to reflect on the process of creating a communication plan and what we have learned throughout the semester. We hope you enjoy and learn something from our reflections.

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Let's Talk About Sex

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...
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Incorporating Pharmacists into the HPVAX Action Plan

    Throughout the course of this project, my group and I have discovered that local pharmacists can play an important role in HPV vaccine uptake among harder to reach community members. Compared to primary care providers, pharmacists tend to be more accessible, have extended hours, and walk-in options. Pharmacies are typically situated more conveniently in communities that major health centers, as well. Additionally, Gov. Hochul recently signed legislation allowing pharmacists to administer HPV vaccines. The combination of these factors widens the opportunity for vaccination uptake among our primary audience: young adult MSM in Harlem.      In the action plan, we honed in on how to best raise awareness among pharmacists about the need for increased vaccination among MSM in Harlem. One tactic we came up with is called "Data Bites: A Lunch & Learn Series." This monthly series will allow local pharmacists and physicians to get to know one another and disc...
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Budgeting for Evaluation: A Critical Step in the Process

   In addition to working on the budget for tactics for our communication plan I was also responsible for working on the budget for evaluation. Budgeting for evaluation may not be the most exciting portion of this project but it is incredibly vital to long-term success. Evaluation is critical to see if our communication plan made a difference and reached the goals we set out to achieve. This is especially valuable to show funders and project partner. Evaluation helps you determine if your project was successful and if it is evaluation data can be useful for attracting more funding sources for future endeavors. Evaluation is especially important for our group’s topic because the reason we were drawn to the topic of HPV-related cancers in men who have sex with men aged 18-26 because very little has been done before on this topic in this population. We need to evaluate the success of our program in order to understand what messages and tactics are effective with our different gr...
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