Colorado Cancer Fund – Increasing Demand for and Knowledge about the HPV Vaccine

The Northeast Colorado Health Department was funded to work with the Alliance for HPV Free Colorado. The Alliance for HPV Free Colorado (Alliance) uses a multidisciplinary, socio-ecological approach to increase HPV vaccine series completion among 11-17 year olds in a 15 county region. During a previous grant, the Alliance tested campaign creative and messaging with mothers of 11-17 year olds in the Denver metro region; however these were not tested in rural/frontier and Spanish-speaking audiences. Through this proposal, the Alliance will work to increase reach of campaign materials to parents of 11-17 year olds in Spanish-speaking and rural/frontier communities and test the effectiveness of our webpage in meeting the information needs of parents in our regions. In order to best serve our communities, we need to understand the most effective strategies for messaging and messaging channels for the diverse communities the Alliance covers. Rural/frontier communities have comparatively low HPV vaccination rates that in time will lead to disparate cancer rates and Latinas are at greater risk for being diagnosed with cervical cancer. With this project, the Alliance aims to address these health inequities in the region.