Yale Cancer Center has partnered with 71 other National Cancer Institute (NCI)-designated cancer centers to issue a joint statement urging the nation’s physicians, parents, and young adults to get the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination back on track.
Dramatic drops in annual well visits and immunizations during the COVID-19 pandemic have caused a significant vaccination gap and lag in vital preventive services among U.S. children and adolescents—especially for the HPV vaccine.
“Yale Cancer Center is proud to join our counterparts around the country to lead the charge to help eliminate HPV-related cancers in our region,” said Nita Ahuja, MD, MBA, FACS, Interim Director of Yale Cancer Center and Interim Physician-in-Chief at Smilow Cancer Hospital, William H. Carmalt Professor of Surgery, and Chair of Surgery. “It’s crucial to prioritize vaccinating against HPV to protect our children and communities.”
Nearly 80 million Americans – 1 out of every 4 people – are infected with HPV, a virus that causes several types of cancers. Of those millions, more than 31,000 will be diagnosed with an HPV-related cancer this year. Despite those staggering figures and the availability of a vaccine to prevent HPV infections, HPV vaccination rates remain significantly lower than other recommended adolescent vaccines in the U.S. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, HPV vaccination rates lagged far behind other vaccines and other countries’ HPV vaccination rates. According to 2017 data from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), fewer than half (49%) of adolescents were up to date on the HPV vaccine.
Those numbers have declined dangerously since the pandemic:
· Early in the pandemic, HPV vaccination rates among adolescents fell by 75%, resulting in a large cohort of unvaccinated children.
· Since March 2020, an estimated one million doses of HPV vaccine have been missed by adolescents with public insurance— a decline of 21% over pre-pandemic levels.
“The HPV vaccine helps prevent six types of cancer,” said Linda Niccolai, PhD, Professor of Epidemiology (Microbial Diseases), Director of the HPV Working Group and the Connecticut Emerging Infections Program at Yale, and a member of Yale Cancer Center. “We desperately need to return to scheduled well visits and catch up on vaccinating our adolescents and young adults against these potentially fatal cancers.”
The U.S. has recommended routine HPV vaccination for females since 2006, and for males since 2011. Current recommendations are for routine vaccination at ages 11 or 12 or starting at age 9. Catch-up HPV vaccination is recommended through age 26.
NCI Cancer Centers strongly encourage parents to vaccinate their adolescents as soon as possible. The CDC recently authorized COVID-19 vaccination for 12-15-year-old children allowing for missed doses of routinely recommended vaccines, including HPV, to be administered at the same time. NCI Cancer Centers strongly urge action by health care systems and health care providers to identify and contact adolescents due for vaccinations and to use every opportunity to encourage and complete vaccination.
More information on HPV is available from the CDC and National HPV Vaccination Roundtable. This is the third time that all NCI-designated cancer centers have come together to issue a national call to action. All 71 cancer centers unanimously share the goal of sending a powerful message to parents, adolescents and health care providers about the importance of HPV vaccination for the elimination of HPV-related cancers.