HPV is a major cause of morbidity and mortality that can be reduced or prevented through HPV vaccination. Despite evidence of safety and efficacy, and endorsement by professional organizations, HPV vaccination rates are suboptimal. Provider and healthcare system factors are important determinants of parents’ decisions to vaccinate their child against HPV. Although the single most important determinant is receiving a recommendation from a healthcare provider, only 40% of physicians report routinely recommending HPV vaccination for 11-12 year old girls and only 33% report recommending it for 11-12 year old boys. The primary goal of our project is to increase initiation (at least 1 dose) of HP...

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HPV is a major cause of morbidity and mortality that can be reduced or prevented through HPV vaccination. Despite evidence of safety and efficacy, and endorsement by professional organizations, HPV vaccination rates are suboptimal. Provider and healthcare system factors are important determinants of parents’ decisions to vaccinate their child against HPV. Although the single most important determinant is receiving a recommendation from a healthcare provider, only 40% of physicians report routinely recommending HPV vaccination for 11-12 year old girls and only 33% report recommending it for 11-12 year old boys. The primary goal of our project is to increase initiation (at least 1 dose) of HPV vaccination among male and female patients ages 11-17 in a pediatric clinic network with 48 clinics in the greater Houston area. We propose to: (1) develop, pretest, and implement two multi-component interventions, targeting providers and parents of adolescents to increase HPV vaccination initiation; (2) evaluate the effectiveness of the two multi-component interventions on HPV vaccination initiation rates in adolescents; and (3) evaluate the cost-effectiveness of the provider-only and parent plus provider interventions. We worked with medical and professional staff at TCP to identify ways to improve HPV vaccination rates using technology and data systems currently in place to ensure the sustainability of strategies we find to be effective and to facilitate dissemination to other sites. We identified evidence-based strategies found to be effective at increasing vaccination rates in children and adults, but that have not been extensively tested for HPV vaccine. Our project will extend the evidence on effectiveness of these strategies to HPV vaccination. Data will provide guidance to healthcare organizations as to the most efficacious and cost-beneficial strategies to impact HPV vaccination rates.

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