“HPV vaccines could dramatically reduce the incidence of HPV-associated cancers, but uptake of these vaccines is far lower than for other routine childhood and teen immunizations,” said study author Kevin Henry. He is an assistant professor at Temple University in Philadelphia and a member of Fox Chase Cancer Center’s Cancer Prevention and Control program.
“The main goal of our study was to understand if geographic factors — that is, characteristics about a person’s community — affect vaccination uptake, because this knowledge could inform current efforts to increase vaccination and prevent cancer,” he said in a journal news release.
“The higher HPV vaccination rates among girls living in poor communities and majority Hispanic communities, which also tend to have high poverty rates, are encouraging because these communities often have higher cervical cancer rates. But, continued cervical cancer screening of vaccinated and unvaccinated women is needed because the vaccine does not cover all cancer-causing HPV types and sexually active women could have been infected prior to vaccination,” Henry said.
“The higher HPV vaccination rates in these groups also provide some evidence supporting successful health care practice and community-based interventions,” he added.
“What is not encouraging is that girls living in predominantly high-poverty non-Hispanic black communities have HPV vaccination rates that are lower than rates for Hispanics. Additional research is needed to better understand why these differences exist,” Henry concluded.
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