Goals and Recommendations: Education --> Who Will be Targeted?

A major argument reiterated throughout this blog stresses the lack of education pertaining to HPV as a sexually transmitted infection. We argued that parents and young women are not properly educated about HPV, making it unfair and unjust to implement its vaccine. Decisions concerning Gardasil have been made strictly surrounding the prevention of cervical cancer. Nonetheless, HPV vaccination programs have been designed to educate parents, but not in a proper manner. For example, in Toronto, grade 8 females are given an information package to take home to parents. This “educational package” includes the following:

- A letter outlining the HPV program
- Fact sheet on HPV vaccine
- Consent form
- Pamphlet (translated into 12 languages)

The information package outlined above provides information concerning the vaccine only. But, what if someone has never heard of HPV? The pamphlet may provide important facts; however, it does not guarantee that parents and children will actually read it. Our goal is to further educate parents, young women, and sex educators about all the facts concerning HPV as a disease, in order to guarantee an informed decision.

We want to begin by targeting parents who feel uncomfortable towards Gardasil due to their misconception of HPV. For example, many parents part of the Catholic School Board believe that the implementation of Gardasil will lead to an increase in young women’s promiscuity. Our goal is to eradicate this myth, and provide proper education and facts regarding HPV, because in reality one can still contract the disease even if he or she is not sexually active. Next, we want to target all parents and young women concerning what is HPV, and inform them about alternative approaches to cervical cancer prevention (pap tests). Finally, we want to ensure that family doctors stress to their female patients the importance of yearly pap check ups. We want to educate family doctors and gynaecologists the importance of maintaining prompt contact with their patients regarding pap test results.