Broadening the perspective on gender equity in immunization: The unique contributions of Human Papillomavirus vaccination

Designing a Pro-Equity HPV Vaccine Delivery Program for Girls Who Have Dropped Out of School: Community Perspectives From Uttar Pradesh, India

India experiences a substantial burden of cervical cancer and accounts for nearly one third of cervical cancer deaths worldwide. While human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccines have been introduced subnationally in some states, HPV has not yet been rolled out nationally. Given the target age group, schools are the most common delivery channel for HPV vaccines, but this fails to account for local girls who never attended or no longer attend school. We conducted a qualitative, design-informed, community-based study conducted in Uttar Pradesh, India. We assessed facilitators and barriers among out-of-school girls and proposed program characteristics to inform the design of pro-equity HPV vaccine delivery programs for out-of-school girls. Programs should improve parental knowledge of the risk of cervical cancer, engage vaccinated girls as vaccine champions, utilize varied media options for low-literacy populations, and ensure that HPV vaccine services are accessible and flexible to accommodate out-of-school girls. In areas with poor or irregular school attendance among adolescent girls, HPV vaccine coverage will remain suboptimal until programs can effectively address their needs and reach this priority population. Our findings present a meaningful opportunity for program planners to purposefully design HPV vaccination programs according to these parameters, rather than modifying existing programs to include HPV vaccine. Adolescent girls, their parents, and other community members should be involved in program design to ensure that the program can effectively meet the needs of adolescent girls who are not in school.

The influence of gender on immunisation: using an ecological framework to examine intersecting inequities and pathways to change

There is still a substantial knowledge gap on how gender mediates child health in general, and child immunisation outcomes in particular. Similarly, implementation of interventions to mitigate gender inequities that hinder children from being vaccinated requires additional perspectives and research. We adopt an intersectional approach to gender and delve into the social ecology of implementation, to show how gender inequities and their connection with immunisation are grounded in the interplay between individual, household, community and system factors. We show how an ecological model can be used as an overarching framework to support more precise identification of the mechanisms causing gender inequity and their structural complexity, to identify suitable change agents and interventions that target the underlying causes of marginalisation, and to ensure outcomes are relevant within specific population groups.