Research indicates that human papillomavirus (HPV), a sexually transmitted infection that causes over 70% of cervical cancer cases, disproportionately affects Black women and women of African descent in the United States.¹  Concomitantly, research shows that a “knowledge gap” exists, whereby Black women are significantly less likely to have heard of HPV than their White counterparts.²  At the same time, the recent release of a new HPV vaccine targeted to girls and young women aged, has sparked public debate about the risks and benefits of mandating vaccination in middle school aged girls.³  At the center of this debate are the parents and primary caretakers of these young women - whose cultural values, awareness, and knowledge and risk perceptions of HPV and the vaccine will likely shape their decisions to voluntarily vaccinate daughters,^4,5 or to support vaccination mandates.⁶ Thus, understanding the communication needs of parents/primary caregivers around HPV and the vaccine will be essential as public HPV and vaccine awareness campaigns increase.

The proposed study will identify and document the communication needs around HPV infection and vaccination among Black women who are primary caregivers of young women and girls aged 7-20.  Using a community-based participatory research (CBPR) approach, MassCONECT will work collaboratively with our community partner, the Boston REACH Coalition to develop and conduct focus groups that will help to assess HPV and vaccination communication needs to raise community awareness. These activities should prove very useful in strategic communication and outreach with low -SEP Black women in Boston.

Goals

We have three specific goals for our workshop, including: a) To share information about the communication barriers that Black women in Boston face with respect to accessing trusted information channels and sources, processing information content, and utilizing information recommendations; b) To discuss risk communication recommendations with community members and leaders in order to increase equitable HPV communication strategies in vulnerable neighborhoods in Boston; c) To gain community feedback on the usefulness of information presented, and considerations for future information dissemination and research to reduce HPV communication inequalities.

The Research Team

We have assembled a strong interdisciplinary research team with wide reaching expertise in the CBPR process, communications, and health disparities, which are critical to this investigation, including:

• K. “Vish” Viswanath, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor and Principal Investigator of MassCONECT, and Director of the MassCONECT Media and Outreach Core, and is the mentor for the Project Leaders.
  
• Kalahn Taylor-Clark, Ph.D., M.P.H. is a Kellogg Health Scholar at the Harvard School of Public Health and Dana Farber Cancer Institute, and will be the Co-Project Leader for this project.
  
• Cheryl Clark, M.D., Sc.D. is an Instructor of Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and is a co-project leader on this study. She is the Principal Investigator and lead evaluator of the Boston REACH 2010 Coalition, has collaborated with them during the past two years, and will be the Co-Project Leader for this project.
  
• Nashira Baril, M.P.H. is the Director of Boston REACH Coalition at the Boston Public Health Commission.