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Half of US teenage girls fail to receive HPV vaccine at recommended age
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Despite increases, only 55.9% of adolescent girls received the HPV vaccine at the age currently recommended by the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, according to recent findings.
“Previous research studies observed that attitude and practice of both parents and providers are reasons for lower HPV vaccine uptake at the CDC recommended age,” Mahbubur Rahman, PhD, associate professor at the department of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston told Infectious Diseases in Children. “On the one hand, parents prefer to vaccinate their older daughters than their younger ones; on the other hand, providers recommend the vaccine more frequently to older adolescents as they experience higher refusal rates when they offer it to parents of younger girls.”
“It is a sort of double-edged sword which is preventing HPV vaccination at younger age. As a result, younger girls experience more missed opportunities for HPV vaccine administration than older girls.”
To assess trends of provider-verified HPV vaccine initiation and completion among adolescent girls, Rahman and colleagues evaluated data from 2008-2012 from the National Immunization Survey – Teen, an annual CDC cross-sectional survey. The survey collects vaccination information from parents or guardians of adolescents aged 13 to 17 years using telephone and mailed surveys.
The researchers evaluated as dependent variables the age of adolescent girls at initiation (first dose) and completion (at least three doses) of the vaccine. Year of vaccination was analyzed as the predictor variable. Data on age at vaccine initiation were available for 24,466 girls and for age at completion for 15,872 girls.
In 2008 the researchers wrote that the weighted proportion of girls who initiated the vaccine and were aged younger than 13 years was 14.1%; in 2009, the proportion was 24.1%; in 2010, 35.9%; in 2011, 47.7%; and in 2012, 55.9% (P for trend < .001).
The mean age at HPV vaccine initiation and completion followed a similar pattern, with mean initiation age decreasing from 14.2 years at the start of the study period to 12.5 years at the end, and mean completion age decreasing from 14.7 years to 13.1 years (P for trend < .001 for both).
“Rates of HPV infection increase significantly every year for young people between 14 and 24, so vaccination at a young age is very important,” Rahman said in a press release. “It’s important that parents and health care providers are aware of the importance of early HPV vaccination to ensure that girls receive this vaccination at the CDC’s recommended age.”
Disclosure: The researchers report no relevant financial disclosures.
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