In the Netherlands, RIVER-EU has been working with Turkish and Moroccan background communities whose HPV vaccine uptake falls consistently below the national average. This April, RIVER-EU partner and coordinator, University Medical Center Groningen (UMCG), brought those findings back to the people who matter most: the professionals who shape the system and the women at its centre.
After five years of successful collaboration, the RIVER-EU project will conclude with a final public event in Brussels, bringing together communities, practitioners, researchers, and policymakers to reflect on key outcomes and discuss pathways for advancing equitable vaccination strategies across Europe.
At the 18th European Public Health Conference (EPHC 2025) in Helsinki, RIVER-EU will host a 1-hour scientific workshop and roundtable discussion on Wednesday, 12 November 2025.
The RIVER-EU project and JITSUVAX project, funded by the Horizon2020 research programme, joined forces at the European Health Forum Gastein to discuss the challenge of vaccine hesitancy.
In the Netherlands, human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination was introduced in 2010 in the national immunization programme, targeted towards adolescent girls in the year they turned 13 years old. The selected vaccine is bivalent, targeting HPV types 16 and 18. In 2022, the HPV vaccination programme was extended to boys, with the first round of vaccinations held in March and April 2022.