The Community Nurse as a Public Health Determinant

Overview

To date, there have been no interventional studies aimed at increasing HPV vaccination rates by making use of digital and involving all stakeholders within this process: nurses, physicians, caregivers, parents, and children/adolescents according to the PPI principle. The primary objective of the project is to identify the effectiveness of a digital educational intervention, conducted by a multidisciplinary healthcare team and targeting adolescents of both sexes in secondary schools. The outcome measures will be: engagement, increased knowledge and self-efficacy, and vaccination uptake. This project will identify new models for addressing public health needs. The secondary aim is to evaluate parents' attitudes toward vaccination pre- and post-intervention education. A quasi-experimental, pre-post educational intervention study will be conducted by adopting a convenience sampling will be adopted at secondary schools in Bari (Puglia, Italy).

The study will be carried out in a multiphasic mode. All steps are described below. * First Phase (T0): the Community Nurses (CN) will send, via e-mail to all parents, a questionnaire aimed at investigating their children's vaccination status, hesitation to vaccination, sources of information, and information needs about vaccination. Then, upon prior arrangement with the school Principal, the CN will, in-person, distribute a questionnaire to all participating students to explore adolescents' knowledge about HPV vaccination, their involvement in vaccine decision-making, their feelings, and perceived self-efficacy. * Second Phase (T1): the CN, after analyzing all the responses from the questionnaires administered to both parents (to investigate hesitations to vaccination) and students (on students' knowledge, involvement, feelings, self-efficacy), will set up an educational intervention, involving the members of expert (nurses and physicians' experts in public health). Description of the educational intervention The educational intervention will be provided (at T1) in two ways: (I) a video lecture in e-learning mode lasting about an hour, aimed at adolescents, using the School Institute's platform for distance education, using audiovisual systems and slide presentations in Power Point format; learner-learner interactions will be possible through e-mail messages, real-time individual chats and asynchronous discussion forum conversations including comment sections.. The event will be recorded so that both adolescents and parents can access it at their convenience. The educational content will generally take into account the following topic areas: a) basic information on HPV, modes of prevention and contagion, vaccination and sexual health; b) epidemiology on cervical cancer, incidence and mortality rates; c) preventive measures (vaccines, condoms, screening tests); and d) discussion with privileged witnesses who have experienced contagion. No form of clinical counseling will be carried out during the video lectures. (II) the promotion of 2-minute "videopills" on the social channels most frequently used by students (dedicated youtube channel/school portal) in which clinical experts (pediatrician, hygienist, health care assistant, and CN) will raise awareness of the importance of HPV vaccination in adolescents, providing brief information on modes of transmission, prevention, and health effects of the virus. \- Third Phase (T2) - follow up In the last phase (three months after the intervention), parents will be contacted again by the CN, by telephone, to assess whether they have been vaccinated against HPV. At the same time, the effectiveness of the educational intervention will be evaluated by administering the same instruments used at T0.