UIC Study Finds Girls Aware of HPV Vaccine’s Benefits
[Writer] This is research news from U-I-C – the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Today, Dr. Rachael Caskey, assistant professor of pediatrics and internal medicine, talks about a national survey of girls and young women that found many have accurate information about the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine, but few have knowledge about the HPV virus. The study also found that most obtain their information about the vaccine from advertisements.
Here’s professor Caskey:
[Caskey] Myself and colleagues of mine from the University of Chicago, Caleb Alexander and Stacy Lindau, are interested in examining barriers to vaccine adoption by adolescents and young adults. So essentially, why girls or young women do or don’t get vaccines that are recommended. In particular, we’re interested in the HPV vaccine, commonly known as Gardasil which is produced by Merck, which is a new vaccine recently recommended in June of 2006 for all girls and young women ages 9 through 26 to receive.
So to examine barriers to adopting this vaccine, knowledge about HPV, knowledge about the vaccine, we conducted a national survey of girls ages 13 through 26 and we used a survey research firm that has a sample of households all across the country that has been well validated against the U.S. census.
And we sent out a survey to ask these girls and young women what they knew about HPV, what they knew about the shot, their concerns about safety, and where they get their information about HPV in particular.
We conducted the survey in November and December of 2007, so that was about six months after the vaccine was universally recommended. And we received our results shortly thereafter, and we had survey results from just over 1000 participants.
We found that in total, 30 percent of 13 to 17 year olds had received at least one injection of the HPV vaccine series, which is a three shot series; and nine percent of the 18 to 26 year olds, so in total that’s about 18 percent of the participant population had received at least one injection of the HVP vaccine series.
In addition, we asked questions to assess knowledge about the human papillomavirus infection as well as the vaccine. And we found that knowledge was very heterogeneous. Most people knew very little about the HPV infection itself. Knowledge was a little bit better about the vaccine, though interestingly did not vary across ages. So the older women did not know any more than younger girls did about either the vaccine, nor the infection.
One of the more important findings of the study is that despite the fact that girls and young women knew very little about this infection, they did not believe that the vaccine provided any benefit beyond its true impact; meaning that girls and young women did not think that those who received the vaccine could stop getting pap smears, could stop using condoms, or were prevented from other sexually transmitted infections and so forth, which is very important, as that may help allay concerns that getting this vaccine could promote sexual promiscuity or decrease cervical cancer screening.
In addition, we asked sources of information, so we asked participants to tell us where they heard about the vaccine, where they got their information, and 66 percent cited advertisements for Gardasil by Merck — which was very interesting — followed by 35 percent said their health care provider, and about 30 percent reported a family member providing them information.
Though 77 percent reported their health care provider as their most trusted source of information, only about a third reported that their health care provider had ever talked to them about the HPV vaccine or the HPV infection. And these were people who had been to the doctor in the last six months that were specifically asked that question.
We asked questions to try to assess barriers to receiving the HPV vaccine and we separated the answers by age group; the 13- to 17-year-olds and the 18- to 26-year-olds. For the 13- to 17-year-old girls, the most commonly cited reason for not receiving the vaccine was not being sexually active, despite the fact that this vaccine likely provides greatest benefit if received prior to exposure to the virus — in other words, prior to sexual
experience.
The second most common barrier to vaccine adoption among the 13 to 17 year olds was concern about vaccine safety.
Conversely, the 18 to 26 year old girls cited cost as the most common barrier to not having received the vaccine, followed by concerns about vaccine safety and not being sexually active.
In conclusion, we found that HPV vaccination rates in our national sample are consistent with those cited by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In addition, despite the fact that knowledge about both the human papillomavirus infection and vaccine were variable, the majority of girls and young women surveyed in this project did not believe that the vaccine provided protective benefits beyond its true impact, meaning they did not think that those who received the vaccine did not have to get cervical cancer screening or did not have to use safe sex practices.
[Writer] Dr. Rachael Caskey is an assistant professor in pediatrics and internal medicine.
For more information about this research, go to www-dot-news-dot- uic-dot-edu (www.today.uic.edu) … click on “news releases.” … and look for the release dated October 15, 2009.
This has been research news from U-I-C – the University of Illinois at Chicago.
