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Situation and Audience Analysis Reflection

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 how we narrowed our primary audience. Key informant interviews helped immensely in this process, as they provided us with information that is not widely published in the literature. After completing our interviews, we decided to focus on unvaccinated MSM aged 18- to 26-years-old in Harlem.

    Another challenge we experienced was choosing who our secondary audiences would be. Both of our interviews were with people in healthcare and academia, which was incredibly helpful. However, they did not have the lived experience of someone in the primary audience. Due to time constraints, we were unable to speak with someone in our primary audience. I think this would have been beneficial in selecting our secondary audiences, as the primary audience can speak to who they interact with most and how these stakeholders influence (or do not influence) their actions. For example, we originally planned to include family members as a secondary audience. However, after speaking with Dr. Schiavo and conducting key informant interviews, we realized young adult men likely would not discuss sexual health, sexually transmitted infection, and preventive measures with their families. With this feedback, we opted to include sexual partners, medical care providers in urgent care and sexual health clinics, and pharmacists as our secondary audiences. 

    I was struck by how much this part of the project laid the foundation for the rest of the project. Having a comprehensive understanding of the audiences you are communicating with and where they are situated plays a vital role and how well the rest of the health communication plan is executed. 


[Posted by Morgan Parker]

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