Editorial comment
Commenting on the findings, Rebecca Perkins, MD, Boston University School of Medicine, and colleagues point out that the COVID-19 pandemic has led to disruptions in HPV vaccination programs and has reversed much of the progress made in recent years. “During the pandemic, providers and health systems have deprioritized adolescent vaccination and particularly HPV vaccination, which in turn has led to more severe drops for HPV vaccination than for other adolescent vaccinations, and for adolescent vaccination, compared with early childhood and adult vaccinations,” Dr. Perkins and colleagues write in an accompanying editorial.
Thus, the need to compensate for the cumulative deficit of missed vaccinations over the past 2 years has created a “serious and urgent threat” to cancer prevention efforts – “a shortfall from which it may take a decade to recover,” the editorialists predict. To try and reverse this trend, several practices have been shown to improve HPV vaccination rates.
The first is a strong provider recommendation such as, “Your child is due for an HPV vaccine today.” The second is to give standing orders to allow nurses and medical assistants to administer vaccinations without requiring intervention by a physician. Lastly, programs to remind patients when vaccines are due and to recall them for appointments also work well.
“Using evidence-based methods and redoubling our efforts to prioritize HPV vaccination will be crucial to ensuring that we do not lose a generation to preventable HPV-associated cancer,” write Dr. Perkins and colleagues.
The study authors and editorialists have disclosed no relevant financial relationships.
A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.