Study: 38.6% of children have received an HPV vaccine dose
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Key takeaways:
- More than one-third of children have received one or more HPV vaccine doses.
- Children with private health insurance were more likely to have received a dose.
More than one-third of children aged 9 to 17 years in the United States had received one or more HPV vaccines doses as of 2022, according to a new CDC report.
Vaccination against HPV — the most common sexually transmitted infection in the U.S. — is recommended for children aged 11 and 12 years but may be started as early as age 9 years, according to the CDC.
Last year, researchers reported that moving HPV vaccine initiation to age 9 or 10 years could improve coverage, and a study published in MMWR showed that the rate of vaccination among teens aged 13 to 17 years did not increase for the first time ever in 2022.
Although parents remain hesitant about HPV vaccination, findings have suggested that reframing conversations about the vaccines to focus on their ability to reduce the risk for cancer could improve uptake.
“This report uses parent-reported data from the 2022 National Health Interview Survey to describe the percentage of children ages 9 to 17 years who received at least one dose of the HPV vaccine by selected sociodemographic and health characteristics,” researchers at the National Center for Health Statistics wrote in a new brief.
According to their review of the data, 38.6% of children aged 9 to 17 years had received one or more HPV vaccine doses in 2022. Uptake increased with age, from 7.3% at age 9 to 10 years, to 30.9% at age 11 to 12 years, 48.8% at age 13 to 14 years and 56.9% at age 15 to 17 years.
Children with private health insurance (41.5%) were most likely to have received one or more HPV vaccine doses compared with children with Medicaid coverage (37%), other government coverage (30.2%), and those without insurance (20.7%). Children living with a disability were also more likely to receive one or more HPV vaccine doses.
The authors also took note of where children resided, with children living in large central metropolitan areas (39.4%), large fringe metropolitan areas (41.1%) and medium and small metropolitan areas (39.4%) being more likely to have received one or more HPV vaccine doses compared with children living in nonmetropolitan areas (30%).
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