Technically Speaking: Looking for New Tools and Resources to Help Increase Your Clinic's HPV Vaccination Rates? Here Are Some Great Ones!
Published on in Vaccine Update for Healthcare Providers
Published on in Vaccine Update for Healthcare Providers
The most recently published data from the 2017 National Immunization Survey – Teen showed that, although HPV vaccination coverage has increased annually since 2013, initiation of HPV vaccination remains lower than MenACWY. From 2016 to 2017, 85% of surveyed adolescents age 13-17 had received at least one dose of MenACWY vaccine, but only 66% had received at least one dose of HPV vaccine. And only 49% had completed an HPV vaccine series. For comparison, 89% of these adolescents had received Tdap.
One of the barriers to HPV vaccination is that some parents question the need to vaccinate their preteen against a sexually transmitted virus. Unfortunately, providers have too often responded to this parental concern by not giving a strong recommendation for HPV vaccination, or by introducing the vaccine to parents in an entirely different way than Tdap or MenACWY. Yet all three of these vaccines are recommended at the same age.
Multiple studies show that patients who receive a strong vaccine recommendation from their provider are four to five times more likely to receive the HPV vaccine. Clearly, YOU are the key to HPV-related cancer prevention!
CDC and AAP have developed several new resources to help providers feel confident communicating with parents about HPV vaccination of their preteen.
Contributed by: Deborah Wexler, MD
Categories: Vaccine Update June 2019, Technically Speaking
Materials in this section are updated as new information and vaccines become available. The Vaccine Education Center staff regularly reviews materials for accuracy.
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