Study results from a randomized study published in JAMA Pediatrics suggest that training to help health care professionals better communicate about human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccines with adolescent patients and their parents increased initiation and completion of HPV vaccine series among both boys and girls.
Today, more 35,000 HPV-related cancers occur each year and effective vaccines against HPV have been available in the United States since 2006 for girls and since 2009 for boys. However, the vaccines are underused among adolescents and interventions to increase vaccination rates are being studied.
…a communication training intervention among primary care health care professionals may increase national adolescent HPV vaccination levels…
The study, by?Amanda F. Dempsey, MD., Ph.D., MPH., of the University of Colorado School of Medicine, and colleagues, was conducted in 16 primary care practices in Denver, Colorado, with half implementing a communication training intervention and the other half serving as a control group for comparison group.
Photo 1.o: Human Papilloma Virus vaccine with syringe in vial at a clinic.Conducted between February 2015 and January 2016, the study included 188 medical professionals and about 43,000 adolescents.
Multiple components
The communication training program for health care professionals had five components and included fact sheets, a parent education website, images depicting diseases associated with HPV, a decision aid for HPV vaccination, and communication training for health care professionals (interventions). The training also included differences in HPV vaccine series initiation and completion for patients ages 11 to 17 in the intervention and control practice groups (outcomes)
This was a randomized clinical trial (RCT). RCTs allow for the strongest inferences to be made about the true effect of an intervention. However, not all RCT results can be replicated in real-world settings because patient characteristics or other variables may differ from those that were studied in the RCT. Furthermore, the intervention could not examine at the patient level the effect of specific components of the intervention on HPV vaccination uptake.
Last Editorial Review: March 27, 2018
Featured Image: Vaccination of women Courtesy: ? 2010 – 2018 Fotolia. Used with permission.
Copyright ? 2010 – 2018 Sunvalley Communication, LLC. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Sunvalley Communication content, including by framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Sunvalley Communication. Sunvalley Communication shall not be liable for any errors or delays in the content, or for any actions taken in reliance thereon. Onco?Zine, Oncozine and The Onco?Zine Brief are registered trademarks and trademarks of Sunvalley Communication around the world.
