Perlmutter Cancer Center at NYU Langone Health Joins Call For Urgent Action To Get Cancer-Preventing HPV Vaccination Back On Track

The COVID-19 pandemic has interrupted delivery of key health services for children and adolescents, including HPV vaccination for cancer prevention

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NYU Langone Health

May 21, 2021, 06:00 ET

NEW YORK, May 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Newswise -- Perlmutter Cancer Center at NYU Langone Health is collaborating with more than 70 other National Cancer Institute (NCI)-designated cancer centers and partner organizations 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.

Nearly 80 million Americans - or one out of every four people - are infected with HPV, a virus that causes several types of cancers. Of those millions, more than 36,000 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 2019 data from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), slightly more than half (54%) 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 U.S. is facing a significant vaccination gap, especially for adolescents, due to the pandemic," said Heather Brandt, Ph.D., director of the HPV Cancer Prevention Program at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital and coordinator for the joint statement from NCI Cancer Centers. "Well-child visits are down. Usual 'back to school' vaccination activity for adolescents has been limited by virtual and hybrid learning. It is crucial that we get back on track as a nation with adolescent vaccination to ensure we protect our children and communities."

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.

"HPV is the cause of cervical cancer and will soon be the major cause of head and neck cancer," said Benjamin G. Neel, MD, PhD, director of Perlmutter Cancer Center and professor of Medicine at NYU Grossman School of Medicine. "Now is the perfect time not only to get teens vaccinated against COVID-19, but also to prevent them from getting these potentially deadly cancers."

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, sharing a unanimous 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.

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SOURCE NYU Langone Health