More than a quarter of U.S. parents surveyed refused human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination for their adolescents because of a lack of overall trust in adolescent vaccination programs and higher levels of perceived harm, a study found.
In an online survey of 1,484 U.S. parents, 28% of respondents reported they had refused the HPV vaccine on behalf of their children aged 11-17 years at least once. Another 8% responded they had elected to delay vaccination. The remaining two-thirds of respondents said they had neither refused nor delayed the vaccination, reported Melissa B. Gilkey, PhD, of Harvard Medical School, Boston, and her associates (Hum Vaccin Immunother. 2016. doi: 10.1080/21645515.2016.1247134).
jarun011/Thinkstock
Compared with parents who reported neither refusal nor delay, refusal was associated with lower confidence in adolescent vaccination (relative risk ratio = 0.66, 95% CI, 0.48-0.91), lower perceived HPV vaccine effectiveness (RRR = 0.68, 95% CI, 0.50-0.91), and higher perceived harms (RRR = 3.49, 95% CI, 2.65-4.60). Parents who reported delaying vaccination were more likely to endorse insufficient information as the reason (RRR = 1.76, 95% CI, 1.08-2.85). While 79% of parents who had delayed HPV vaccination said talking with a physician would help them with their decision, 61% of parents who refused the vaccination said it would. In addition, nearly half of parents who delayed vaccination said they did so out of a preference to wait until their children were older.
In adolescents whose parents had ever refused the vaccine, only 27% had received one HPV vaccine vs. 59% in those whose parents had elected to delay vaccination. Among adolescents whose parents responded they had neither refused nor delayed the vaccine, 56% had received one HPV vaccine.
Although the investigators did not find race, ethnicity, nor educational attainment were drivers of whether a parent chose to vaccinate, families with higher income levels tended to refuse the HPV vaccine more often than did other parents (RRR: 1.48, 95% confidence interval, 1.02-2.15).
Merck and the National Cancer Institute funded the study. Coauthor Noel T. Brewer, PhD, has received HPV vaccine-related grants from, or been on paid advisory boards for, Merck, GlaxoSmithKline, and Pfizer; he served on the National Vaccine Advisory Committee Working Group on HPV Vaccine and is chair of the National HPV Vaccination Roundtable.
On Twitter @whitneymcknight