US sees no increase in HPV vaccine coverage for 2nd straight year
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Key takeaways:
- HPV vaccination is recommended at ages 11 or 12 years but may be given as early as age 9 years.
- The percentage of teens who are up to date on HPV vaccine coverage has not increased in the past 2 years.
For the 2nd year in a row, HPV vaccination coverage among adolescents in the United States did not increase, according to data published Thursday by the CDC.
In fact, coverage went down slightly in 2023, researchers reported in MMWR.
The CDC recommends that children be vaccinated against HPV at ages 11 or 12 years but says the two-dose series can start as early as age 9 years. In fact, research has shown that extending vaccination to an earlier age — and promoting the vaccines’ ability to prevent cancer — could increase uptake.
For the new study, Cassandra Pingali, MPH, MS, and colleagues from the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases analyzed national data to assess vaccine coverage among adolescents aged 13 to 17 years in 2023.
Last year, Pingali and colleagues reported that just 62.6% of adolescents were up to date on HPV vaccinations in 2022 — the first time in a decade that HPV vaccine coverage did not increase among U.S. teens.
Reviewing data for 2023, they found that coverage was similar but had decreased slightly to 61.4% of the more than 16,000 13- to 17-year-olds included in the analysis.
For the other vaccines routinely recommended for this age group — Tdap and the quadrivalent meningococcal conjugate vaccine — coverage remained high and stable from 2022 to 2023, according to the researchers. Specifically, 89% had received at least one Tdap dose and 88.4% had received at least one dose of the meningococcal vaccine.
The CDC has been commemorating the 30th anniversary of the launch of the Vaccines for Children (VFC) program, which provides free immunizations for children whose families cannot afford or are otherwise unable to access vaccines.
According to data reported earlier this month, the nine routine childhood immunizations covered under the VFC program have prevented more than 1.1 million deaths and 508 million illnesses in children born since 1994.
Pingali and colleagues noted in the new report that around 40% of adolescents aged 13 to 17 years in 2023 were eligible to receive vaccines through the VFC program.
They found, however, that teens eligible for the program no longer had higher HPV vaccine coverage in 2023 than noneligible teens, which was not the case before the COVID-19 pandemic. This “could signal a change in accessibility to vaccination through the VFC program, a change that needs further exploration,” they wrote.
References:
- CDC. Administering HPV vaccine. https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd/hpv/hcp/administration.html. Last reviewed Nov. 16, 2021. Accessed Aug. 22, 2024.
- CDC. Vaccines for Children (VFC) program. https://www.cdc.gov/vitalsigns/vaccines-for-children/index.html. Updated Aug. 13, 2024. Accessed Aug. 22, 2024.
- Pingali C, et al. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep. 2024;doi:10.15585/mmwr.mm7333a1.
- Zhou F, et al. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep. 2024;doi:10.15585/mmwr.mm7331a2.
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