Attendees
- Archer
- Brackney
- Clark
- Ellingson
- Gargano
- Hogarty
- Holbert,
- Lillpopp
- Litwin
- Sillasen
- Uwandu
- Valett
- Verma
Welcome and Introduction: Jerry Gargano, 4th yr UConn Dental student, active in Oral Health Workgroup
- Discussion of Call-to-action letter. Examples of other states’ letters are more expansive than our letter of 2023, addressing not just the pediatric population. Lucinda will circulate a version based on other states’ versions.
- Awareness Designations in March and April
We’d like to develop a list of any upcoming events people would like us to promote for the awareness designation periods coming up (HPV Awareness Day, head and neck cancer, and adolescent vaccines). We can put together a message/info page that we can distribute to our members to send out to their contacts.
- March 4, International HPV Awareness Day
- Head and Neck ca. awareness month, April 2024. The goal of this initiative is to encourage adults who are at high risk for head and neck cancer to take advantage of the nationwide and international free screenings. A key message of the campaign is that early diagnosis is key to successful treatment of these types of cancers.
- Adolescent Immunization Action Week Adolescent Immunization Action Week (AIAW) is a yearly observance held in April, highlighting the importance of adolescent immunizations by urging healthcare providers and parents to take action by getting their adolescents up to date on their vaccines.
Adolescent Immunization Action Week (#AIAW24) will take place April 1-5. The goal of AIAW is to motivate adolescents and young adults to stay up to date on their recommended vaccines. AIAW provides healthcare providers, parents, and teens with information and tools to support this goal. These resources can be used to encourage teens to ask questions and seek out trusted sources, so they can better understand the benefits of vaccination.
- https://www.unity4teenvax.org/aiaw24/
- ACS: https://www.cancer.org/content/dam/cancer-org/online-documents/en/pdf/flyers/hpv-vaccination-just-the-facts-for-parents.pdf
- CDC: https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/partners/teens/posters.html
- https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/events/AIAW.html
- UConn Social Media Project: Jerry talked about a dental student-run social media project at UConn and the development of infographics that will promote our messaging and be designed to be read on a smartphone. UConn has given permission to open a social media account and it will need technical review for content. Drs Clark and Verma volunteered to help with this.
This could be something for Jonathan’s social media calendar of social media content. Hoping to post something for HPV Awareness Day, March 4.
https://www.askabouthpv.org/
From Elizabeth: The ACS HPV roundtable has wonderful resources that can be used for social media. Resource Center – National HPV Roundtable
HPV Roundtable Webinar on March 6. Registration link here:
https://hpvroundtable.org/
- The community conversations idea: How to proceed: shall we choose one community and topic (eg. catch up cohort for HPV vaccine and Fairfield as the town) and if successful we can use that template to replicate it across the state for different events. This topic to be addressed at a future meeting.
- Small group meeting with pharmacy to iron out access to vaccine questions. Mitch and Lucinda will start this process, reaching out to pharmacy staff.
- Data. While recognizing that there is a paucity of good quality immunization data, ti will be getting better over the next several years. In the meantime, we will seek out national and state data for HPV-related cancer incidence.
- Practices with good immunization rates. Maybe have a panel addressing challenges, barriers, and strategies.
Next Meeting: March 27, 2024. Zoom invite sent.