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Many Adolescent US Girls Still Not Getting HPV Vaccine
31 July 2015 - - The number of 13- to 17-year-old boys and girls in the US getting the human papillomavirus vaccine increased slightly for the second year in a row, according to data from CDC's 2014 National Immunization Survey-Teen (NIS-Teen), published in this week's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. Despite these increases, four out of ten adolescent girls and six out of ten adolescent boys have not started the recommended HPV vaccine series, leaving them vulnerable to cancers caused by HPV infections. Persistent HPV infections can cause cancers of the cervix, vagina, and vulva in women; cancers of the penis in men; and cancers of the anus and oropharynx (back of the throat, base of the tongue, and tonsils) in men and women. CDC recommends the vaccine for girls and boys at age 11 to 12 years. The latest estimates show that 60 % of adolescent girls and 42 % of adolescent boys have received one or more doses of HPV vaccine. This was an increase of three percentage points for girls and 8 %age points for boys from the 2013 NIS-Teen survey estimates. While there was a three percentage point overall increase nationally for first-dose HPV vaccine coverage among adolescent girls, a handful of state and local areas achieved much larger increases in coverage. Some of the promising strategies that have been effective in combination at increasing receipt of HPV vaccine include establishing links between cancer organisations and immunisation organisations to emphasize HPV vaccination is cancer prevention. Health care providers have also launched education initiatives, including ones reminding doctors and nurses to take every opportunity to strongly recommend HPV vaccine, especially when they recommend the two other vaccines recommended at age 11 to 12 years (the quadrivalent meningococcal conjugate and Tdap vaccines) and the annual flu vaccine. Practice-based quality improvement efforts by state and local health departments, such as assessment of a clinic's HPV vaccination coverage levels and providing feedback on how to improve coverage have proven effective, has have public communication campaigns; and reminder-recall interventions, such as using immunisation information systems to send reminders to parents about vaccinations for which their child is due. The relatively large increases in HPV vaccination seen in some states mask the lack of progress in other states. Every year, about 27,000 women and men in the United States are diagnosed with a cancer caused by HPV infection. HPV vaccination could prevent the majority of these cancers from ever developing. Research shows that an effective recommendation from a healthcare professional is crucial to a parent's decision to get the HPV vaccine for their child. CDC encourages clinicians to recommend HPV vaccine the same way and same day they recommend other vaccines for adolescents. Preteens need four vaccines at ages 11 or 12 years to protect against serious diseases: quadrivalent meningococcal vaccine to protect against meningitis; HPV vaccine to protect against HPV infection and HPV cancers; Tdap vaccine to protect against tetanus, diphtheria, and pertussis, or whooping cough; and an annual flu shot to protect against seasonal flu. A second dose of meningococcal vaccine is needed at age 16.
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