ABSTRACT

Development of Health Communication & Educational Intervention Tools to Enhance Awareness, Access and Cost Effectiveness of HPV Vaccination in Nepal

The aim of the project is to use health communication and educational intervention tools to enhance awareness, access and cost effectiveness of HPV vaccination in Nepal. Using the urban-rural setting of the Lumbini Zone in Western Nepal (Province Five) and in collaboration with the local non-profit paramedical college and its parent NGO organization Pratiman-Neema Memorial Foundation (PNMF), this study makes attempts to understand what current HPV vaccine prevalence and public awareness is, and what the main barriers of HPV vaccine are. A research team from the University of New Mexico’s (UNM) Nepal Study Center (NSC) has just concluded its first phase of its field work about the mothers’ and daughters’ openness to the HPV vaccine as well as their current awareness of HPV. The study uses The Theory of Planned Behavior to examine the link between the individual’s attitude, subjective norm, perceived control and their intention of accepting HPV vaccine. Their willingness to pay for the HPV vaccine will be estimated as their intention to predict their behavior of vaccination. The difference between mothers and daughters will also be compared to select different-target interventions.

This project will use the information from the results from the first phase to develop a set of media and technology-driven health communication interventions that are more conducive to local conditions. It will constitute the implementation of the best-practice method in a targeted community and the impact of the implemented intervention will be assessed in the future.

Research Team Investigators and Collaborative Team: The project team consisted of Dr. Alok K. Bohara – Professor, Department of Economics, UNM, and Mengqi (Mandy) Liu – Ph. D. Candidate, Department of Economics, UNM. This Project is funded by the American Cancer Society. We acknowledge the help provided by our collaborator’s Lumbini Center for Sustainability (LCS) and their research & survey team (Ms. Swati Thapa, Mr. Dharma KC, Prakash Rayamajhi, Anup Poudel, Sharada Pathak and the PNMF & PNC college staff and several field supervisors, enumerators, & data coders). We also acknowledge the corporation of the schools which provided the interview sites and organized the participants: Shree Bhairab Navadeep Secondary School (Palpa), Shree Prithivi Higher Secondary School (Gulmi), Shree Sarvajanik Secondary School (Arghakhanchi) and various schools in Rupandehi district.