The major impediment to increased HPV vaccination coverage in young males and females is lack of health care provider recommendation. Despite its efficacy in preventing cervical cancer, HPV vaccination in females (49. 5%) and males (37.5%) ages 13 through 17 falls well below the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) Healthy People 2020 target of 80% coverage. Parents' willingness to vaccinate their child has been shown to be much higher when physicians share personal vaccination decisions for their own children as well as what other parents have done at that particular clinic. Furthermore, the vaccine must be presented presumptively as a "bundle" along with the rest of the standard adolescent vaccine panel. Multiple exemplars presented including in several European countries, low-income countries, and Rwanda, demonstrate that school-based health care systems dramatically increase vaccination coverage. Finally, acceptability for vaccination of males must improve by increasing provider recommendation and by presenting the HPV vaccine as a penile, anal, and oropharyngeal cancer prevention therapy in males and not merely a vaccine to prevent cervical cancers in females. Pediatricians, obstetrician/gynecologists, and primary care physicians should consider these data as a call-to-action.
Annals of medicine. 2018 Jan 10 [Epub ahead of print]
Aria C Attia, Judith Wolf, Ana Nuñez
a Department of Medicine , Drexel University College of Medicine , Philadelphia , U.S.A.