Optimal health is vital to help college-age students achieve their education and life goals. For this reason, collegiate campuses can play an important role in advancing the health of students. All universities and colleges with the resources to do so should take action to increase HPV vaccination rates on campus as a means to protect the health of students and the surrounding community. The HPV vaccine is universally approved and recommended up to age 26 (approved up to age 45), making universities and colleges a prime location to target young adults for vaccination who did not receive it as a child.
Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) successfully launched two HPV vaccination initiatives on campus in 2018 that improved HPV vaccination rates by greater than 600%. We are eager to share, learn, and work with other universities and colleges to keep students healthy. This toolkit shares ideas, strategies, materials, and other resources that you can use to design and implement your own campus HPV vaccination campaign.
We recognize all campuses are different and have different resources they can devote to a campus public health campaign. We have designed this toolkit so it can be used to create a campaign that is specific to your campus and your student body. Regardless of the scope or level of effort, we hope to empower universities and colleges to address HPV vaccination in meaningful ways. Specifically, the toolkit focuses on assisting campuses with three major goals:
A collaborative effort was put forth from Indiana HPV stakeholder organizations to author and organize this toolkit so that other universities may share this success. These partners are dedicated to continually improving the toolkit and supporting campuses that prioritize student health through HPV education.
Collaborative partners: