<![CDATA[INTERVIEW WITH Joel Palefsky]]>

Why an HPV Awareness Day?
International HPV Awareness Day is an initiative of the International Papillomavirus Society (IPVS). This initiative is being implemented in partnership with more than 70 organisations around the world. It has emerged out of the acknowledgment that few people are aware of HPV as an infectious agent and its role in several important cancers including cervical cancer, anal cancer and oropharyngeal cancer.

Unlike other campaigns, this campaign is not focused on a specific disease but rather on the virus that causes it, i.e., HPV. Another major difference between International HPV Awareness Day and other campaigns is a global focus on both women and men with a broad age range. Our focus on HPV allows us to educate the public about the high proportion of people who acquire a genital HPV infection at some point in their lives; that HPV affects both men and women; and that even if a given person does not have HPV infection themselves, there is a high likelihood that they care about someone in their life who is at risk of HPV-related cancer.

The tagline for the campaign is “Give Love. Not HPV”, emphasising that taking care of yourself and/or your loved ones to prevent HPV-related cancers is an act of love.

An understanding among the general public of the role of HPV supports the continuum of measures designed to prevent HPV-associated cancers, from vaccination to screening. Ultimately, we believe that elimination of HPV-related cancers is possible but it will require a sustained prevention effort among both women and men worldwide. We believe that International HPV Awareness Day is an important step in that direction.

The tagline for the campaign is “Give Love. Not HPV”, emphasising that taking care of yourself and/or your loved ones to prevent HPV-related cancers is an act of love. The logo shows a red heart representing love merging below into a black X, representing stopping HPV (Figure 1). We think that this is a powerful and positive message that we hope will stimulate people to get more information and to take preventive measures where possible. In parts of the world where preventive measures are not yet fully in place, we hope the campaign will increase public awareness with the goal of accelerating the implementation and availability of these measures.

What is the proposal for the 2018 edition?
This will be an ongoing campaign but the theme of the first year is “HPV affects everyone”. Most of the activities will be on International HPV Awareness Day itself, March 4 of every year, but we anticipate that going forward there will be campaign-related activities year-round.

The first edition of the HPV Awareness day will take place on March 4th 2018, and annually thereafter.

Campaign activities will include press releases, rallies, print ads and conversations on a wide variety of social media. The campaign is really a 2-part effort. The first part of the campaign, which involves publicizing the campaign materials, is designed to attract people’s attention, pique their interest about HPV and start the conversation going. The same materials for this part of the campaign are going to be used worldwide but will be translated into the local language. For the first year of the campaign that will be English, French, Spanish, Hindi and Malay. The second part is designed to give people the tools to educate themselves further about HPV and the measures that they can take for themselves or their loved ones to prevent HPV-related cancers. This part of the campaign is very local and our partner organizations in the different locations will provide web links to educational resources and other prevention tools that are suitable for that location.

What are the future perspectives for the HPV awareness Day?
For our first year, we are targeting 10 countries but we expect to expand the number of countries in the following years of the campaign. And even though we are targeting 10 countries in 2018, IPVS has assembled a group of more than 70 organisations around the world who will promote the campaign in many other locations. In future years of the campaign we will expand the number of target countries, languages in which the materials are translated, and number and scope of campaign activities. And although the campaign logo will remain the same, each year will have a slightly different theme.

Figure 1:Logo of the HPV Awareness day. The tagline for the campaign is “Give Love. Not HPV”. The logo shows a red heart representing love merging below into a black X, representing stopping HPV.

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Joel Palefsky, M.D, F.R.C.P.(C)
Professor of Medicine University of California, San Francisco,
CA, USA
Joel.Palefsky@ucsf.edu

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