Book promo “Institutional campaigns in public health”

  • Research Team of Scientific Culture (SCIENCEFLOWS)
  • Lorena Cano Oron
  • February 26th, 2017

On February 24th, at “Casa del Libro” in Valencia, book promo of “Institutional Campaigns for Public Health. The Case of the HPV Vaccine ” (in spanish “Campañas institucionales de salud pública. El caso de la vacuna contra el virus VPH”) took place. Next to the editor, Carolina Moreno, were Javier Ordóñez, coauthor and professor of History of Science of the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, and writer Carmen Amoraga.

banner de la presentació

The three speeches emphasized the three main and defining aspects of Professor Moreno’s work. First, the discursive polyphony of the book, that presents arguments for and against immunization and gathers testimonies of the different actors involved and affected by the HPV vaccine in the social debate: doctors, politicians, journalists. Secondly, the plurality of methodologies used in this research and the diversity of discourses analyzed were highlighted: content analysis, both manual and computerized, of the material generated on the subject in the media and in social networks; from  interviews with political leaders; the perception of students through surveys and finally the debate about vaccination during parliamentary sessions at the House of Representatives.

Thirdly, they assessed the lack of indoctrination or channeling toward a concrete position on the decision to vaccinate girls against HPV. As Carolina Moreno pointed out, “the book does not pretend to have a conclusion […] the book has tried to make visible the whole social, mediatic and political debate  […] because the debate exists and deny its existence is absurd. So, what it has been tried to do is visualize it, put it in context, try to use the best research techniques for each of the scenarios that has been analyzed.”

During the promo, Professor Moreno wanted to clarified that her teams position and that of herself  does not match at all with the so-called ‘ antivaccine movement’. The book includes not only different points of view, but also focus on the particularity of this vaccine, which differs from others included in the vaccine calendar, in variables such as its high cost and the low incidence rate of cervical cancer in Spain. She also stressed the need for an epidemiological study that delves into this issue and provides more data in order to disseminate them socially and incorporate them into the debate.

More info on the book and the event:

 

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