After getting vaccinated, I feel more confident and now encourage other girls
In the villages of Haryana's Nuh district, a preventive health campaign has quietly rewritten the relationship between institutional medicine and community trust. M3M Foundation, working alongside the Haryana Health Department, vaccinated more than 600 adolescent girls against HPV across 84 villages in Tauru Block — not by overcoming resistance, but by understanding it. The effort reminds us that public health is, at its core, a human conversation, and that the distance between fear and acceptance is often bridged not by authority, but by patience and honest information.
- Misinformation about infertility and religious harm had created a wall of hesitancy that threatened to keep hundreds of girls unprotected against a preventable cancer.
- Health workers and foundation teams moved village by village through more than 60 schools, finding that doubt was not ignorance — it was fear that needed to be met with genuine engagement.
- More than 90 awareness sessions deployed board games, illustrated flip books, songs, and short videos to make cervical cancer prevention something girls could understand on their own terms.
- A vaccinated girl became an advocate herself — telling peers to seek information and make informed choices — showing how trust, once built, travels further than any campaign can reach alone.
- The initiative has now surpassed its original targets, and M3M Foundation has committed to deepening its partnership with the Haryana Health Department to carry this model into more underserved communities.
In the villages of Tauru Block in Haryana's Nuh district, a health milestone has quietly taken shape. More than 600 adolescent girls — most of them fourteen years old — have received the HPV vaccine, protection against the virus responsible for cervical cancer. The effort, spanning 84 villages and 54 local governance bodies, was carried out by M3M Foundation in partnership with the Haryana Health Department, reaching communities where preventive medicine had rarely arrived before.
The campaign did not begin with easy acceptance. Families had absorbed stories — from neighbors, from social media — that the vaccine caused infertility, triggered dangerous side effects, or conflicted with religious belief. These were not small fears. They were the kind that keep mothers from bringing daughters to clinics. Rather than pushing past them, the foundation and health department chose to sit with them.
More than 90 awareness sessions were held across 60 government schools, drawing in over 3,000 participants — students, mothers, teachers, ASHA workers, and community officials. To make the science accessible, the foundation developed interactive tools with SYImpact Consulting: Snake and Ladder boards, Ludo cards, illustrated flip books, songs, and short videos. The goal was understanding, not compliance.
Gradually, resistance softened. One vaccinated girl described how an awareness session cut through the noise of conflicting information she had encountered. Afterward, she felt confident — and began encouraging other girls to learn and decide for themselves. This is how public health actually moves: not through mandate, but through meaning.
Dr. Nihal Singh Solanki of the Tauru Community Health Center noted that community awareness is the true foundation of preventive care — without it, even well-resourced programs collapse. Dr. Payal Kanodia of M3M Foundation framed the work within a broader vision: that girls in underserved areas deserve the same access to protection as anyone else, and that prevention is always preferable to cure.
Having exceeded its original targets, the foundation has committed to expanding the partnership with the Haryana Health Department into additional underserved communities. What began as hesitation across 84 villages has become a working model — proof that the path to health runs through trust, and that trust is built one honest conversation at a time.
In the villages scattered across Tauru Block in Haryana's Nuh district, a quiet health campaign has reached a milestone. Over the past months, more than 600 adolescent girls—most of them fourteen years old—have received the HPV vaccine, a shot that protects against the virus that causes cervical cancer. The effort spans 84 villages and 54 local governance bodies, touching communities with names like Rathiwas, Khori Kalan, Charora, and Jafrabad. It is the work of M3M Foundation working alongside the Haryana Health Department, and it arrived in places where such preventive medicine had never quite taken root before.
The campaign did not begin with easy acceptance. When health workers first moved through these villages talking about HPV vaccination, they encountered something familiar to public health workers everywhere: doubt. Families had heard stories—some whispered, some shared on social media—that the vaccine caused infertility, that it brought dangerous side effects, that it conflicted with their religious beliefs. These were not small objections. They were the kind of hesitations that stop mothers from bringing their daughters to clinics, that make fathers shake their heads when a health worker arrives at the door. The foundation and the health department did not dismiss these concerns or push past them. Instead, they sat with them.
Over ninety awareness sessions unfolded across more than sixty government schools. The foundation created something unusual for rural health campaigns: interactive games designed around the Snake and Ladder board, Ludo cards, flip books with illustrations, quiz materials, songs about HPV, and short videos. They partnered with SYImpact Consulting to develop these tools, making the science of cervical cancer prevention something a teenager could understand and engage with, not just something an adult told her to accept. More than three thousand people participated in these sessions—schoolchildren, mothers, teachers, ASHA health workers, officials, and neighbors. The conversations happened in classrooms and community spaces, in small groups and larger gatherings.
Gradually, the resistance softened. A girl who received the vaccine described what changed her mind: she had heard conflicting things from people around her and from social media, but when she attended an awareness session, the information made sense to her. After vaccination, she said, she felt more confident. She began encouraging other girls to learn about it and make their own informed choices. This is how public health actually moves—not through mandate, but through understanding.
Dr. Nihal Singh Solanki, the Senior Medical Officer at the Community Health Center in Tauru, recognized what the partnership had accomplished. Community awareness, he said, is the foundation of preventive healthcare. Without it, even the best programs fail. With it, families come forward. Dr. Payal Kanodia, who leads M3M Foundation, framed the work as part of a larger vision of preventive medicine—the idea that keeping people healthy is better than treating them after they become sick, and that girls in underserved areas deserve the same access to that protection as anyone else.
The campaign has now exceeded its original targets. The foundation has committed to continuing the work with the Haryana Health Department, expanding into other underserved communities, strengthening the health systems at the grassroots level where most people actually live. What began as resistance in eighty-four villages has become a model for how to move a community toward health—not through force, but through patience, through the right information shared in the right way, and through the simple act of listening to what people fear.
Notable Quotes
Community awareness is key to the success of preventive healthcare initiatives. Our collaboration with M3M Foundation has helped strengthen acceptance of HPV vaccination and reach families more effectively at the grassroots level.— Dr. Nihal Singh Solanki, Senior Medical Officer, CHC Tauru
Inspired by the vision of preventive healthcare, we are committed to ensuring that girls in underserved communities receive the right information and access to timely healthcare.— Dr. Payal Kanodia, Chairperson and Trustee, M3M Foundation
The Hearth Conversation Another angle on the story
Why did families resist the vaccine so strongly at first? What were they actually afraid of?
The fears were rooted in misinformation that spread through social networks and social media—stories about infertility, about dangerous side effects. But these weren't irrational. They were the result of not having trusted sources of information. When you live in a village and you hear something scary about a medical intervention, and no one you trust has explained it to you clearly, you hold onto that fear.
So the awareness sessions were really about trust-building, not just information transfer?
Exactly. You can hand someone a pamphlet with facts, but if they don't trust the source, the facts don't land. The foundation created these interactive games, songs, videos—things that made the conversation feel less like a lecture and more like a dialogue. They showed up repeatedly, answered questions, let people voice their doubts.
What changed people's minds? Was it a single moment or a gradual shift?
It seems to have been gradual. The sessions happened across schools and communities over time. When a girl attended a session and understood the science, she could then talk to her mother about it. When a mother heard from other mothers that their daughters were fine after vaccination, that shifted things. It's cumulative.
The fact that they exceeded their targets—does that suggest the model could work elsewhere?
That's what the foundation is betting on. They're planning to expand the partnership with the health department into other underserved areas. If you can crack the code on community acceptance in one place, you can adapt it to another. The tools they created—the games, the songs—those can travel.
What does this tell us about how public health actually works at the ground level?
It tells us that the science is only half the battle. The other half is meeting people where they are, understanding their fears, and giving them the information and space to make their own choices. When you do that, they choose health.