Consistent Branding As a Key to HPV Cancer Prevention

Background:  HPV vaccination in the Unites States began the same year as the rest of the adolescent immunization program, yet HPV vaccination rates are far below the rates of the other two vaccines routinely recommended for preteens. This safe, effective, and cancer-preventing vaccine is grossly underutilized due to hesitancy on the part of both parents and clinicians. State immunization and cancer prevention programs, as well as partner organizations are working to improve HPV vaccination rates with limited funding. 

Program background:  CDC’s HPV vaccination communications campaigns are branded as “HPV Vaccine is Cancer Prevention” and “You Are the Key to HPV Cancer Prevention” for the public and clinicians, respectively. Included within the campaigns are images, text treatments, products, and presentations that can be used by state and local programs, as well as partner organizations, to share clear, consistent, and accurate information about HPV vaccination for cancer prevention. Formative research with parents about HPV vaccination has demonstrated that many parents seek out CDC information; allowing state immunization programs to disseminate materials including the CDC logo increases the credibility of the materials to the parents in those communities. Numerous requests for co-branding led to the development of a unique solution that would respond to program and partner needs to include multiple organization logos, within the limited time they have to produce and disseminate products. 

Evaluation Methods and Results:  The Adolescent Immunization Communications Team at CDC has successfully developed and deployed the solution to co-branding requests on campaign materials to a number of CDC-funded immunization and cancer programs, as well as partner organizations. Additionally, numerous immunization programs have used all or parts of the CDC’s HPV vaccine communications campaigns in their own HPV vaccination improvement projects. 

Conclusions:  Many immunization programs and partner organizations have used these branded campaign products to supplement their own materials, which has allowed them to save funding by not reinventing the wheel. Using the solution to co-branding requests has decreased the material development cycle, allowing state and local dissemination of messages and materials to occur simultaneously with the CDC campaigns.

Implications for research and/or practice:  With an increasing number of emerging public health threats, public health programs and partner organizations need creative ways to continue campaigns and message dissemination with limited amounts of funding. Repurposing branded campaigns that were developed using health communication science principles not only reduces costs, but it also ensures that the general public experiences consistency and accuracy of messages for health topics. The simplicity of the solution to co-branding means it could easily be used by programs across CDC and other organizations outside of CDC.