EUROPEAN NETWORK TO PROMOTE HPV VACCINACTION
A European Network to Promote HPV Vaccination, to Study HPV Awareness in the New EU Member States and to Face Cervical Cancer by a Prevention Campaign
AURORA
Title: AN EUROPEAN NETWORK TO PROMOTE HPVVACCINACTION, TO STUDY HPV AWARENESS IN THE NEW EU MEMBER STATES AND TOFACE CERVICAL CANCER BY A PREVENTION CAMPAIGN
- Funders: Executive Agency for Health & Consumers
- Duration: 36 months ( 2010-2013)
- RUBSI is an Associate Partner
Objectives:
AURORA project will aim to establish a European network of experts coming from New EU Member States able to identify:
• a new strategy to carry out a prevention campaign targeted young people in these countries;
• a common method to collect and analyze the available data;
• a new way to exchange best practices and experiences in the fight against CERVICAL CANCER spreading all over the Europe;
• to improve knowledge about prevention programmes in the EU.
Infact, the vaccination with the HPV vaccines does not give 100%protection against cervical cancer: HPV types 16 and 18 covered by thevaccines account for around 70% of cervical cancers in women worldwide.
Therefore,HPV vaccination is not a replacement for routine cervical screening.Since no vaccine is 100% effective and HPV vaccines will not provideprotection against nonvaccine HPV types, or against existing HPVinfections, it is recommended that authorities carry out organisedpopulation-wide, quality assured cervical screening by pap smear or HPVDNA test. This screening should take account of the “Europeanguidelines for quality assurance in cervical cancer screening anddiagnosis”, as recommended by the EU.
According to this context AURORA project will deal with the following issues identified by the EC:
- Insufficient coverage data on cancer screening.
• Insufficient coverage data on HPV vaccines.
• Communication, e.g. informing the public that HPV vaccination does not replace cancer screening.
• Ethical issues.
AURORA project will be structured in four macro-tasks:
(i) analysis of the local contexts and the
(ii)scientific aspects of the cervical cancer spreading in Europe studyingthe literature on the theme and about the different local contexts;
(iii)define and exchange good practices using questionnaires and interviewswith opinion leaders and sector operators and semi-structuredinterviews with social, health and educational operators working in thefield of cervical cancer prevention.
(iv) European preventioncampaign.The AURORA prevention campaign will support three interventionmodalities acting to create conditions to help people to increase theirknowledge about cervical cancer and to reduce the risk. In addition,the prevention campaign will be based on “Actions in traditional field”as flyers with prevention information, posters and handbooks and“Actions in digital field” as a project web site. Finally, the localpartners will work to implement the local activities, in particular theexperimentation of new prevention campaigns. All the actors involvedwill define a common plan of action to implement the campaign with sameguidelines. In this way the common plan of action will ensure thecollection of data and information starting from a common ground.Moreover, all the collected data and information will be compared andshared to improve the future prevention campaign.
The Partners’ kick-off meeting will take place in Luxembourg on the 14th of January 2011.
21st May. 2010