How do you make HPV vaccination a normal part of every girl’s life? Try asking her local nurse
Launching the HPV vaccine is one thing. Future-proofing uptake across cohorts of adolescent girls is another challenge. A new peer-learning course is bringing together 80,000 health professionals from around the world to share what’s working.
- 3 December 2025
- 4 min read
- by María Fernanda Monzón
The introduction of the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine is one of the most high-stakes challenges in modern public health. Meeting global targets to vaccinate girls before they become sexually active could prevent 62 million deaths from cervical cancer over the next century.
However, the path from a national launch to a sustainable routine programme is fraught with complexity. Health workers must navigate the sensitivities of female puberty, reach girls who may be out of school, and counter rumours that spread faster than the virus itself.
To help, The Geneva Learning Foundation (TGLF) and UNICEF have launched a new peer learning course designed to capture and circulate the “ground truth” of what actually works.
This primer, titled “Get started with HPV vaccination (and keep it going)”, is the first step in a larger set of activities designed to complement the extensive global programme at the sub-national level. It is designed not as a static textbook, but as a living corpus of knowledge derived from the experiences of thousands of health workers.
From campaigns to sustainability
The timing of this initiative is critical. Major efforts are underway to introduce or scale up HPV vaccination in several large countries, including India and Pakistan. While mass campaigns can achieve wide coverage among the initial cohort of eligible girls, the true test lies in integrating HPV vaccination into routine immunisation services to ensure every new cohort is protected.
This transition requires granular, subnational knowledge that often stays locked in the heads of frontline staff. The new course addresses this by drawing on the existing Teach to Reach network, which has already connected over 80,000 health professionals. By sharing their strategies, these workers are building a global evidence base of micro-innovations that help sustain coverage after the campaign tents are packed away.
Solutions from the subnational level
The course content is built entirely on real-world experiences shared by health workers. It highlights how practitioners at the district and facility level are solving the specific logistical and social hurdles of HPV vaccination.
When a health worker in a district in Pakistan shares a successful strategy for engaging religious leaders, or a nurse in India finds a new way to counsel hesitant parents, that knowledge becomes part of the collective intelligence of the network.
For example, effective preparation is cited as a key factor in sustainability. A public health specialist from a global health partner in India noted the necessity of going beyond technical training: “Service providers should be given very good training on HPV vaccine... More time to be spent on orienting staff on behaviour change communication.”
Similarly, reaching the most vulnerable girls often requires moving beyond school-based strategies. Mamanding Kinteh, a public health specialist in The Gambia, shared a successful method for reaching out-of-school girls by leveraging peer networks: “We ask a peer in school, ‘Do you have a peer who is out of school in your community?’.” This community-based approach contributed to a national coverage rate of 83% for the first dose.
Such lessons learned may echo global guidance. The difference is that, in each case, it is a health worker who has actually done it sharing what they did – and how – with colleagues.
A living curriculum
What makes this initiative unique is that the curriculum is not fixed. As part of the learning process, participants are invited to share their own recent challenges and the specific plans they have developed to address them.
This turns every participant into a contributor. When a health worker in a district in Pakistan shares a successful strategy for engaging religious leaders, or a nurse in India finds a new way to counsel hesitant parents, that knowledge becomes part of the collective intelligence of the network.
The course tackles the most sensitive issues head-on, including false rumours that the vaccine can negatively impact fertility. For example, a State Sanitary Engineering Technician in Burkina Faso shared how she convinced a cousin who initially refused to vaccinate his daughter due to such misinformation. By analysing these specific, real-life scenarios, the course helps health workers prepare for the difficult conversations that define the success or failure of an immunisation programme.
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Step one of a global journey
By focusing on the lived reality of health workers, the programme aims to move beyond top-down instruction to a model of peer-to-peer problem-solving. This short primer is the first activity in an ambitious programme to sustain HPV vaccination beyond campaigns by using the power of peer learning, from sharing experience to supporting locally-led implementation.
Enrolment is now open for the inaugural cohort. Health workers are encouraged to invite a colleague to join them, building a local team capable of turning new ideas into sustainable action.
Learn more and enrol at: https://go.learning.foundation/tglf/c/30136
- HPV vaccination: New learning and leadership to bridge the gap between planning and implementation https://redasadki.me/2025/02/25/new-ways-to-learn-and-lead-hpv-vaccination-bridging-planning-and-implementation-gaps/
- AI podcast explores surprising insights from health workers about HPV vaccination https://redasadki.me/2025/02/26/ai-podcast-explores-surprising-insights-from-health-workers-about-hpv-vaccination/
