The Africa Centre is partnering with the University of Johannesburg and the Cancer Alliance to produce a photo story to raise awareness about cervical cancer and the human papillomavirus (HPV) among young people. It will address a major gap in visual, age-appropriate educational resources on this growing public health issue. In addition, an interactive digital game about the booklet will be developed in collaboration with the University of Tilburg (Netherlands). The University of Johannesburg’s social impact division and the Het Jan Marais Fonds at Stellenbosch University will fund this project.
This will be the fourth photo story about prominent health issues in local communities produced by the Africa Centre in collaboration with other institutions. These booklets have proven to be highly effective in raising awareness about serious health conditions through engaging storytelling and relatable characters. The previous three booklets, which were translated into three languages and distributed among various NGOs, clinics and local health departments, tackled the topics of crystal meth, diabetes and teenage pregnancies respectively.
Prevention starts with being informed
Despite cervical cancer being a preventable disease for which there is an effective vaccine, thousands of women die from this type of cancer every year. A lack of knowledge, especially among youth, is at the heart of the problem. HPV is the main cause of cervical cancer and, contrary to general perceptions, affects both boys and girls. However, according to Dr Burt Davis, senior lecturer at the Africa Centre who is leading the project, most youth don’t know about HPV, the risks of the virus, the role of the vaccine and what responsible sexual health practices entail.
Currently, most educational material about cervical cancer and HPV vaccines in South Africa are text-based, only in English and targeted at adults. “There’s an urgent need for creative, age-appropriate, visual resources to reach young people between the ages of 9 and 13,” said Davis. Research shows that children become sexually active at a very young age, which is why early access to easy-to-understand health information is crucial. In addition to improved health literacy and increased vaccination rates among youth, the booklet will also aim to reduce misperceptions and stigma relating to cervical cancer and sexual health.
Making information available in the target youth’s mother tongue is a critical element of the success of the project. Davis explains: “If information is not in the audience’s mother tongue, it’s a lot more difficult for them to understand and trust what they are reading. This, in turn, affects willingness to make use of prevention services such as the HPV vaccine.”
Targeting previously disadvantaged Afrikaans youth
According to the Cancer Alliance, the education gap is particularly significant among Afrikaans-speaking youth in some of the rural areas of the Western Cape. The project will consequently focus on developing an Afrikaans photo novella largely targeted at previously disadvantaged Afrikaans-speaking communities, mostly farming and fishing communities, on the West Coast (Lambert’s Bay, St Helena Bay), in the Cape Winelands (Prince Alfred Hamlet and Pniel) and in the Cape Metropole (Mamre and Ocean View).
Although the initial focus is on serving Afrikaans communities, the booklet will also be translated into English. Long-term objectives include translating the material into another four languages: isiXhosa, isiZulu, Setswana and Sesotho. The booklet will be made available in both printed and digital formats. An expert team from Tilburg University in the Netherlands will do the digitisation.
Working with communities in support of communities
From a high-level perspective, the project forms part of the Cancer Alliance’s greater purpose of providing strategic guidance to the national and provincial health departments and its overarching goal of raising cervical cancer awareness. By delivering evidence-based insights on how youth receive, interpret and internalise health information, the project will help refine and strengthen the development of a social behaviour change communication (SBCC) framework for cervical cancer by the Cancer Alliance and to enhance future campaigns and material.
The project is also aligned with the National Elimination Strategy for Cervical Cancer spearheaded by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and supported by the WHO’s 90-70-90 targets: 90% of girls vaccinated against HPV by age 15; 70% of women screened with a high-performance test by age 35 and again by age 45; and 90% of women with cervical disease receiving appropriate treatment.
To ensure relevant on a grassroots level, the development and testing of the booklet will involve close collaboration with local communities. In each target community, youth, their families and teachers will be invited to a dialogue event to share their input. “The aim is to involve at least 50 to 100 youth plus their families and teachers in each town or area, which should amount to approximately 600 people in total,” said Davis. These interactions will play a crucial role in determining whether the language, imagery and messages used are easy to understand and relevant for the Afrikaans audience.
The booklet will be made available to local health departments as a supplementary resource for existing HPV vaccine and health education programmes. It can, for example, be integrated into school health programmes, clinic-based education and community awareness initiatives.