SHARP

SHARP approaches HPV vaccination as both a cancer-prevention intervention and a possible point of contact for wider adolescent health. School-based vaccination can achieve broad reach among enrolled adolescents, yet it may miss young people who attend irregularly, have left school, move frequently or have limited contact with routine preventive services.

The Strengthening HPV Vaccination and Adolescent Health Research Program asks how HPV vaccination and related adolescent-health services can be delivered through community and facility pathways that complement school-based approaches. The programme spans multiple countries, with a Tanzania study designed around formative assessment, human-centred design and implementation evaluation. Its purpose is not simply to move vaccination into another venue; it is to understand what package of services and delivery strategies fits adolescents who are least visible to school-only programmes.

SHARP also treats the adolescent contact as valuable beyond one vaccine. Education, counselling and other health needs can potentially be integrated, but overloading the platform could reduce feasibility or acceptability. The programme therefore studies how to co-design a locally relevant package, prepare providers and community health workers, measure reach and implementation, and identify which components could be sustained or adapted across different settings.

SHARP therefore treats reach as a design problem. The programme asks how vaccination and other adolescent-health opportunities can be reorganized around where young people actually are, rather than assuming school enrolment is the only practical route to prevention.