Health Promotion Project Plan

Health Promotion Project Plan

Health promotion is a crucial component of primary disease prevention. It refers to the activities that are conducted to help people to increase control over their health and indulge in actions that improve their health and wellbeing. Community health education is one of the most effective health promotion strategies since it seeks to address the factors that encourage the occurrence of illness or injury in the setting within which they exist. Health education stimulates and strengthens community action by furnishing members of the community with the knowledge they need to pursue and practice healthful behaviors. Various disease prevention agendas have been formulated to provide specific indicators for measuring the impact of health promotion efforts. One such program is the Healthy People 2020 agenda, whose primary goal is to ensure every individual achieves a high-quality life that is free of preventable illness, disability, and premature mortality. The Health Promotion Project (HPP) presentation is grounded in the Healthy People 2020 agenda.

Topic

The HPP presentation will be based on the Healthy People 2020 topic, immunization, and Infectious Diseases. Under this topic, the presentation will specifically address objectives IID-11.4 and IID-11.5. Objective IID-11.4 is to increase the percentage of 13 to 15-year-old female adolescents who complete either 2 or 3 doses of human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine following the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) recommendation, from the 2016 baseline of 45% to a target of 80%. Similarly, objective IID-11.5 is to increase the percentage of 13 to 15-year-old male adolescents who complete either 2 or 3 doses of human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine following the ACIP recommendation from the 2016 baseline of 36.4% to a target of 80% (HealthyPeople.gov, 2020). These related objectives draw from the broader Healthy People 2020 goal of reducing, eliminating, or maintaining elimination of cases of vaccine-preventable diseases.

Human papillomavirus is a common vaccine-preventable infection. The infection is highly contagious. The virus is transmitted sexually through physical contact between the skin or mucous membranes with the lesions containing the virus on an infected individual during oral, anal or vaginal sexual intercourse (de Sanjose, Brotons, & Pavón, 2018). HPV infection causes growth on the affected skin, or mucous membrane referred to as warts. Lesions typically occur on the external genitalia, mucous membranes of the genital system, oral cavity or pharynx, or areas of the skin such as nails and fingers depending on the mode of exposure to the virus (de Sanjose, Brotons, & Pavón, 2018). Although the infection is usually self-limiting, more virulent varieties of the virus can cause precancerous lesions that may potentially transform into cancers resulting in significant morbidity and mortality. Tumors that are associated with HPV infection include cervical cancer, pharyngeal, and other anogenital cancers such as cancer of the anus and the penis (de Sanjose, Brotons, & Pavón, 2018).

Vaccination against HPV infection is currently offered in 2 to 3 doses within six months, to male and female adolescents between the ages of 9 and 12 years (CDC, 2020).

The prevalence of HPV infection remains high in the United States, despite the availability of vaccines. According to the CDC, approximately 79 million Americans are infected with the virus (CDC, 2020). The majority of this population consists of young people in their late teenage years and early third decade of life. Besides being at risk of the neoplastic complications of HPV infection, these individuals also serve as reservoirs for transmission of the virus to healthy individuals. More importantly, the high prevalence of disease points to the low rates of HPV immunization coverage, with a large population of vaccine eligible young people being either unvaccinated or under-vaccinated despite recommendation. The low rate of immunization results majorly from low rates of HPV vaccine uptake and vaccine hesitancy (Head, Biederman, Sturm, & Zimet, 2018). As such, efforts to reduce or eliminate HPV infection and its complications rely on a change in the attitudes towards the HPV vaccine to increase vaccine acceptability and uptake. Community health education is an effective strategy for reducing cases of HPV infection by increasing immunization uptake (Head et al., 2018). Education also reduces morbidity by encouraging early referral of cases of HPV infection.

Target Audience

The target population for the presentation will be parents or guardians who have children who are between 8 and 12 years of age. Due to the possibility of wide variations in the ages of parents, parental age will not be part of the inclusion criteria for potential participants. Both male and female parents will be included in the target audience. This decision is because both parents variously determine the level of uptake of recommended childhood vaccines for their children. Accordingly, the extent of uptake and completion of the HPV vaccine among adolescents is directly influenced by parental acceptability of the vaccine (Radisic, Chapman, Flight, & Wilson, 2017). Therefore, Parents are an important target group for efforts to increase HPV vaccine diffusion.

Notably, because of parental influence, the uptake of HPV vaccination has remained suboptimal among adolescents, even though the vaccines are highly recommended. Several factors affect the decisions of parents to have their children immunized. These include socio-environmental influences, personal factors and, the interface between the family and the health care system. One such socio-environmental influence is the belief that vaccination evokes risk compensation (Head et al., 2018). The impact of HPV vaccine hesitancy is notably more significant among male adolescents due to the inappropriately low perceived risk of infection by parents (Radisic et al., 2017). Educating parents about the susceptibility of both male and female adolescents to HPV infection may increase vaccine acceptability by positively influencing parental attitudes (Radisic et al., 2017). Education will consequently increase vaccine uptake.

Goal

The goal of the Health Promotion Project presentation is to reduce the prevalence of HPV infection by increasing the rate of uptake and completion of HPV vaccination among eligible male and female adolescents by increasing HPV vaccine acceptability among their parents.

Objectives

At the end of the presentation, the participant should be able to discuss basic information on HPV and its method of transmission.

At the end of the presentation, the participant should be able to list at least three disease conditions/health problems that can result from HPV infection.

At the end of the presentation, the participant should be able to list at least three methods of preventing HPV infection.

At the end of the presentation, the participant should be able to describe the vaccination schedule of HPV, including the timing and vaccine doses.

Learning Domains

Each of the four objectives requires the participant to verbalize the imparted knowledge at the end of the presentation. The participant is not required to perform any action or demonstration. The psychomotor domain is, therefore, inapplicable to all the four objectives. The first objective requires the participant to discuss the knowledge they have gained about the HPV virus and its transmission, an action that requires at least comprehension and internalization. It is therefore classified under both the cognitive and affective domains (Hoque, 2016). Both the second and third objectives require the participant to list information. This action requires both memorization and organization, putting the two objectives in both the cognitive and affective categories (Hoque, 2016). Finally, the fourth objective requires the learner to describe imparted knowledge. This action will need at least some degree of comprehension, synthesis, and internalization (Hoque, 2016). Therefore, the fourth objective also belongs to both the cognitive and affective domains.

Location

The HPP presentation will be conducted at Village Green Elementary school. Village Green Elementary school is a learning institution located in 12265 Southwest 34 Street in Miami, Florida. It is part of the Miami-Dade County Public schools. The institution has two pre-Kindergarten grades, Kindergarten, and grades 1-5. The school has various parent engagement initiatives, including The Parent Academy, a program that organizes regular parental workshops and classes to increase the involvement of parents in the learning of their children. Besides, the institution has both a parental portal and a parent-parent resource for parents of children with disabilities. As such, the school significantly pursues parental integration. Such integration may increase the accessibility of parents, who are the target audience of the HPP presentation by providing multiple platforms for parental contact. The presentation will be conducted at a venue within the precincts of Village Green School.

Date and Time Frame

The HPP presentation will be conducted on the 11^th of April 2020 at 10.00 am. The entire meeting will take approximately 20 minutes.

Facility Contact Information

Village Green School telephone number: (305) 226-0441. Fax: (305) 222-8140.

Marketing Plan

The presentation will be initially advertised via a poster, hang at a convenient location within the school compound to enhance visibility. Contents of the advertisement will include the title of the HPP project, day of the week, date, month, year, time of the day, and venue of the presentation. Additionally, through the school’s staff member in charge of community involvement, the presentation will be advertised on the parental portal and other parental platforms to enhance access to potential participants. Furthermore, the presentation will be advertised on the Facebook page of the institution.

The community involvement staff member will serve as the liaison between parents and the HPP team. A list of potential participants and their contacts will be prepared at least three weeks before the presentation. Reminders will be sent via cell-phone Short Message Service (SMS) and personal emails of parents, and also posted on the parental portal to increase chances of attendance. Finally, an appropriate incentive such as fare cards will be decided in collaboration with the community involvement official to enhance participation further.

Overall, community health education offers an effective strategy to address socio-cultural barriers to the achievement of health and wellbeing. Although the diffusion of the HPV vaccine has increased steadily over the years, the immunization coverage is still low, as evidenced by the persistently high prevalence of HPV infection. Following the Healthy People 2020 immunization and infectious disease topic and objectives regarding HPV infection, the HPP presentation aims to contribute to the efforts to reduce or eliminate HPV infection by stimulating HPV vaccination rates. As the main determinants of vaccine uptake within families, parents are the perfect target audience for any effort aimed at increasing vaccine uptake, such as the HPP presentation on HPV.

 

References

CDC. (2020, the 19th of March). Human Papillomavirus (HPV). Retrieved from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: https://www.cdc.gov/std/hpv/stdfact-hpv.htm

de Sanjose, S., Brotons, M., & Pavón, M. A. (2018). The natural history of human papillomavirus infection. Best practice & research Clinical obstetrics & gynecology, 2-13.

Head, K. J., Biederman, E., Sturm, L. A., & Zimet, G. D. (2018). A retrospective and prospective look at strategies to increase adolescent HPV vaccine uptake in the United States. Human vaccines & immunotherapeutics, 1626-1635.

HealthyPeople.gov. (2020, the 19th of March). Immunization and Infectious Diseases. Retrieved from HealthyPeople.gov: https://www.healthypeople.gov/2020/topics-objectives/topic/immunization-and-infectious-diseases/objectives

Hoque, M. E. (2016). Three domains of learning: Cognitive, affective, and psychomotor. The Journal of EFL Education and Research, 45-52.

Radisic, G., Chapman, J., Flight, I., & Wilson, C. (2017). Factors associated with parents’ attitudes to the HPV vaccination of their adolescent sons: a systematic review. Preventive medicine, 26-37.

Valentino, K., & Poronsky, C. B. (2016). Human papillomavirus infection and vaccination. Journal of pediatric nursing, e155-e166.

Vickers et al. (2019). Factors Associated with HPV Vaccination Uptake and HPV-Associated Cancers: A County-Level Analysis in the State of Alabama. Journal of community health, 1214-1223.