This week, we were excited to attend an event on HPV vaccination organised by Cheshire and Merseyside Cancer Alliance. With talks and workshops from experts across the field, the day aimed to explore barriers to HPV vaccine uptake among high-risk groups, and encourage collaboration between healthcare, higher education, and community groups.

HPV causes several types of cancer, and is more prominent in men who have sex with men (MSM) and trans people. Improving vaccine uptake among these high risk groups is therefore a key priority for LGBTIQ+ people in cancer care.

With insightful sessions by Tricia Spedding (Head of Public Health for NHS England North West), and Sahir, the day revolved around improving co-production to better understand community needs of the MSM cohort and provide targeted outreach to drive vaccination uptake. 

 Three specific areas of improvement were identified:: confidence of Sexual Health Clinics staff, what information and resources they are offering to patients in appointments, and the time constraints for HCPs providing opportunistic vaccinations. 

The workshop on campaign messaging gave us the opportunity to highlight the importance of co-production throughout a campaign. Members of the community should be involved from the outset of a project right to the finish if we are to truly understand the barriers they face, and how best to communicate our message to them. We emphasised how anal cancer and other cancers need to be brought into HPV campaign messaging. HPV is a key cause of anal cancer in HPV positive MSM, and our community would benefit greatly from more information and awareness of this risk.

We are grateful to the organisers from Cheshire and Merseyside Cancer Alliance for inviting us and platforming our mission and work. We look forward to collaborating more closely across the region in future to improve health outcomes for our community.