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 HPV VACCINACTION, TO STUDY HPV AWARENESS IN THE NEW EU MEMBER STATES AND TO FACE 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.
In fact, the vaccination with the HPV vaccines does not give 100% protection against cervical cancer: HPV types 16 and 18 covered by the vaccines 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 provide protection against nonvaccine HPV types, or against existing HPV infections, it is recommended that authorities carry out organised population-wide, quality assured cervical screening by pap smear or HPV DNA test. This screening should take account of the “European guidelines for quality assurance in cervical cancer screening and diagnosis”, 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 studying the literature on the theme and about the different local contexts;
(iii) define and exchange good practices using questionnaires and interviews with opinion leaders and sector operators and semi-structured interviews with social, health and educational operators working in the field of cervical cancer prevention.
(iv) European prevention campaign.The AURORA prevention campaign will support three intervention modalities acting to create conditions to help people to increase their knowledge 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 local partners will work to implement the local activities, in particular the experimentation of new prevention campaigns. All the actors involved will define a common plan of action to implement the campaign with same guidelines. In this way the common plan of action will ensure the collection of data and information starting from a common ground. Moreover, all the collected data and information will be compared and shared to improve the future prevention campaign.