Role of communication skills of health professionals in promotion of HPV vaccination in the Federation of Bosna and Herzegovina

Background: In aim to promote HPV vaccination among children and youth, the Institute for Public Health of the Federation of BiH in 2023 developed an HPV immunization program, furtherly accepted by the Federal Ministry of Health. In collaboration with WHO and UNFPA country offices, the Institute for Public Health of the Federation of BiH initiated education to emphasize the importance of improving the knowledge and skills for over 280 health professionals in effective communication with parents in the promotion of HPV vaccination. Methods and materials: Paper presents an analysis of results of the pre and post testing of the health professionals directly involved in the HPV vaccination process in the Federation of BiH, regarding their self-confidence in communication with parents about HPV vaccination. For data collection was used the questionnaire as a part of the WHO document "Communicating with caregivers about HPV vaccination: facilitator's guide" published in 2023. The questionnaire was created in Google Forms for health professionals who participated on training. For descriptive and inferential statistics of collected data used IBM SPSS20 package. Results: The data showed an increase in self-confidence of health professionals in communication with parents after completed training. Before training 32.5% of health professionals confirmed self-confidence in talking to parents about HPV vaccination while 68.0% of them after training. Self-confidence about adverse reactions after HPV vaccination is confirmed by 27.4% health professionals before training and by 64.4% of them after training. Conclusions: A systematic approach in improving the communication knowledge and skills of health professionals is significant support for increasement of the coverage and promotion of HPV vaccination.