Hey, Bexar County parents, even if your children have received their back-to-school shots, it’s not too late for those 9 and older to return to doctors’ offices or clinics and get vaccinated against human papillomavirus, or HPV.
It might just prevent cancer and save their lives.
Dr. Allison Grimes, a pediatric oncologist with University Health System, recommends boys and girls start the two-shot series at age 9, as soon as they’re able. There’s no point in waiting — getting the vaccine younger increases its effectiveness, and after age 15, it becomes a three-shot series. The Food and Drug Administration has approved it for adults 45 and younger.
HPV is a sexually transmitted virus that 4 out of 5 people will come into contact with during their lifetime. And for this reason, we imagine some parents have balked about vaccinating their kids. But this isn’t about sex, it’s about cancer prevention. HPV can cause six types of cancer in men and women, including cervical cancer, which is common in women and a major cause of death worldwide. The most common HPV cancer in men is oropharyngeal, which forms in the back of the mouth. Because of that cancer’s location, treating it can be disfiguring, Grimes said. The virus can also cause genital warts.
Recent studies in Scotland and Australia have shown the HPV vaccination is astonishingly effective. In Scotland, vaccinated women born in 1995 or 1996 had a 79 percent to 89 percent reduction in precancerous cervical disease compared with unvaccinated women born in 1988. There was also evidence the younger but unvaccinated women benefited from “herd protection” against high-grade cervical disease due to immunity in the surrounding population.
Australia has funded a national vaccination program since 2007 and extended it to boys in 2013. Participation rates are among the highest in the world. A recent study showed substantial reductions in high-grade cervical disease and genital warts among vaccine-eligible women, and a herd effect resulting in decreased rates of HPV among similarly aged heterosexual men before the male vaccination program kicked off.
So getting yourself and your children vaccinated seems like a no-brainer, for individual protection and to help eliminate HPV worldwide, as other diseases have been dramatically weakened through immunology. But that hasn’t been the case in Bexar County or Texas where vaccination rates have lagged.
For example, a 2015 teen survey showed Bexar County had the lowest HPV vaccination rates in Texas, itself ranked near the bottom of states. Local uptake rates have since improved, partly as a result of initiatives to increase awareness of, and access to, the vaccine.
The main reason teens said they hadn’t been vaccinated was that their health care providers didn’t tell them to. Many insurance companies cover the vaccine, as does the Texas children’s vaccination program, but it’s not required to attend school. So Sally Vernon, a professor of epidemiology and behavioral sciences with UTHealth School of Public Health in Houston, secured a $1.6 million grant from the Cancer Prevention & Research Institute of Texas to educate health care professionals and patients about the vaccine and improve access in primary care clinics throughout the Children’s Hospital of San Antonio network.
Through the grant, funds have been set aside to help uninsured and low-income patients pay for the vaccination, Grimes said. Clinics have successfully petitioned insurance companies to cover the vaccine after initial denials. Grimes encouraged patients to appeal to their insurance companies, if necessary, based on the FDA’s approval of the vaccine.
Methodist Healthcare Ministries of South Texas has also funded work to increase HPV vaccination rates at federally qualified health centers and six clinics in the area.
Grimes’ work focuses on pediatric leukemia and lymphoma patients, who are exponentially more likely to develop second, HPV-related cancers later if they’re not vaccinated. Many pediatric cancer patients see oncologists so often that they don’t see primary care providers, and some insurance providers won’t cover vaccines given at subspecialty clinics, Grimes said. All five local children’s cancer centers have come together around a plan to increase the rates at which the HPV vaccine is recommended and provided.
These efforts are important, and it’s up to the public to take advantage of them. But parents and teens also have to know about the potentially lifesaving importance of the HPV vaccine. Many children and adults have no reason to pass it up.
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