HPV Won’t Stop Me

AAP ANNOUCEMENT BLOG POST:

As an officer in your local chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, I often get asked the question, “What’s the Local AAP doing about X?”  Your local AAP Chapter, New York Chapter 2 (Long Island, Queen and Brooklyn) is among the most active, dynamic and engaged chapters in the 60,000+ membership of the AAP, and our primary goal is to ADD VALUE to your practice and chapter membership.  Under the leadership of current AAP chapter president, Dr. J. Abularrage, your chapter was the FIRST EVER to convene a strategic planning meeting.  The goal of the meeting was to give EVERY member of the local AAP chapter input into how to direct our efforts.

  1. One theme of the strategic planning meeting was the need to work harder to promote Human Papillomavirus Virus (HPV) vaccination.  Nationally, the Centers for Disease Control report that rates of HPV vaccination are approximately 40% and 20% among adolescent females and males respectively – a rate which lags far behind the acceptance of other vaccinations (1).  Local pediatricians, just like our colleagues across the country, are having difficulty successfully promoting the benefits of HPV vaccination against the pushback and negative reactions from both parents and patients.  Reasons for vaccine refusal include parental unwillingness to accept or discuss their child’s sexual behavior, and the myth — debunked in 2012 and again in 2014 articles in Pediatrics — that receiving HPV vaccine will somehow lead to riskier sexual behavior (2, 3).  Local pediatricians are concerned that without sufficient HPV awareness, widespread HPV vaccination will not fulfill its potential in protecting our area’s children against HPV associated cancers and disease.  As January is National Cervical Cancer Awareness Month and February is National Cancer Prevention Month, we are using this post to update you on AAP efforts to promote HPV immunization.

“So what’s the AAP doing about HPV vaccination rates?”

At the National Level, the AAP has many resources available to help integrate and promote HPV awareness and immunization into your practice.  These include toolkits for your practice (https://www.aap.org/en-us/advocacy-and-policy/aap-health-initiatives/Pages/HPV-Champion-Toolkit.aspx), Payer Advocacy materials (https://www.aap.org/en-us/Documents/payeradvocacy_hpv_recs_2015.pdf) and printable resources to help improve (and even get MOC Part IV Credit) for your HPV vaccination efforts.  For those practices with a large social medial presence, there are AAP-sponsored Facebook Messages (https://www.aap.org/en-us/Documents/hpvtoolkit_professionalFB_hpv_2015_August_2015.pdf).

However, all these efforts aim to increase vaccination rates via parental or physician outreach. As we all know, adolescents are different and thus past approaches aimed at increasing immunization rates may not work as well since those vaccinations are administered at much younger ages. Data increasingly suggests adolescents rely on social media and text messaging for healthcare information (4).

Improving education efforts around the impact of HPV has also been shown to increase a desire for teens to be immunized (5). At the local level, your AAP chapter is merging these two principles by working with adolescents and young adults to create a social media campaign aimed at increasing awareness and interest in HPV vaccination.  The hope is that if HPV immunization hesitancy stems from parents, increasing the desire for vaccination among teens will promote more conversations regarding HPV prevention and ultimately, increase local immunization rates.

To do this, we’ve partnered with Inspire Bright (http://www.inspirebright.org ), a local non-profit founded by two Syosset, Long Island sisters while still in high school.  Inspire Bright has a history of working with adolescents on relevant issues in our chapter area.  The group raised funds to purchase high school musical instruments for schools affected by Super Storm Sandy and is currently donating SAT review books to under-privileged teens in New York City.

So how do we motivate adolescents to get vaccinated against HPV?

Your AAP Chapter and Inspire Bright have created a social media campaign designed to appeal specifically to adolescents and college-age children.  Health information regarding HPV vaccination will be widely disseminated on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.  Messages promoting cervical cancer prevention were crafted to specifically appeal to 16-21 year olds and we will be monitoring the impact of the social media’s campaign.   To appeal to this age group, we built upon the successful AAP “I ADVOCATE FOR KIDS BECAUSE . . .” campaign, which generated significant interest across many forms of social media.  Inspire Bright created placards with the phrase, “HPV WON’T STOP ME.”  Together, we brainstormed 12 key messages which will appeal to kids, who can take a picture of themselves with a chose sign and broadcast the message via Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

We ask chapter members to participate in the campaign by making these placards available in your waiting room.  If you are on social media, please promote our key messages to your followers. Stay tuned for updates.

REFERENCES:

  1. National, regional, state and selected local area vaccination coverage among adolescents aged 13–17 years—United States, 2014. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep 2015 / 64(29);784-792
  2. BednarczykRA, Curran EA, Orenstein WA, Omer SB. Sexual activity-related outcomes after human papillomavirus vaccination of 11-to 12-year olds. Pediatrics 2012;130(5):798-805.
  3. Mayhew A, Mullins TL, Ding L, Rosenthal SL, Zimet GD, Morrow C,Kahn  Risk perceptions and subsequent sexual behaviors after HPV vaccination in adolescents. Pediatrics. 2014;133(3):404-11.
  4. O’Keeffe GS, Clarke-PearsonK; Council on Communications and Media. The impact of social media on children, adolescents, and families.  2011;127(4):800-4
  5. Kessels SJ, Marshall HS, Watson M, Braunack-Mayer AJ, Reuzel R, Tooher RL. Factors associated with HPV vaccine uptake in teenage girls: a systematic review. 2012 May 21;30(24):3546-56.