Population Council Research that makes a difference

The region of Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) has been given the political mandate by the World Health Organization (WHO) to improve adolescent health services and cervical cancer prevention, which makes it an important region for testing innovative national strategies for implementing the HPV vaccine. Several countries in LAC have already introduced the vaccine or are developing strategies to roll it out at the national level.

Providing the HPV vaccine presents an important opportunity to better engage adolescent girls in the health system, improve their sexual and reproductive health, and prevent cervical cancer. The WHO and Pan American Health Organization headquarters requested technical assistance from the Population Council in helping country teams prepare for a seminal meeting of potential study collaborators in Mexico to plan the implementation of operations research (OR) studies in Colombia, Mexico, Panama, and Peru. These studies will facilitate the introduction of an adolescent health package together with HPV vaccine delivery in the context of cervical cancer prevention.

For the meeting, the Council was responsible for: (1) developing tools and background documents to support each participating country in synthesizing relevant background information; (2) offering support to country teams in developing their meeting presentations; (3) serving as the meeting rapporteur; (4) giving presentations on OR study designs; (5) writing a final meeting report; and (6) providing follow-up technical assistance to individual countries as they implement their studies.

All country participants expressed commitment and willingness to move forward with the introduction of the HPV vaccine and assess the impact of the interventions. Each country has drafted preliminary OR interventions and mapped out next steps to take.