"Feasibility and Acceptability of Recommending HPV Vaccine at Ages 9–10 Years"
Caroline K. Tietbohl, PhD, Assistant Professor in the Department of Family Medicine, is the lead author of, “Feasibility and Acceptability of Recommending HPV Vaccine at Ages 9–10 Years.” Published in Pediatrics, the study found that parents were generally supportive of initiating HPV vaccination for their children a few years earlier than the traditionally recommended ages of 11–12. Administering the vaccine earlier offers several benefits, including reducing the number of vaccines needed during adolescence and reinforcing the importance of cancer prevention.
“We anticipated that bringing up the HPV vaccine at this age could make the discussion easier by decoupling it from sexual activity and focusing on its purpose—cancer prevention—and this seems to have been true for many parents in our study,” Dr. Tietbohl explained.
Interviews and surveys conducted in both Colorado and California found a positive response from parents and strong support from clinicians—over 90% of clinicians in Colorado and 77% in California reported routinely recommending the vaccine to children at ages 9 or 10, just one month after the intervention.
