Racial and Ethnic Differences in HPV Knowledge, Attitudes, and Vaccination Rates among Low-income African-American, Haitian, Latina, and Caucasian Young Adult Women

Abstract

Objective To examine facilitators and barriers to HPV vaccine uptake in African-American, Haitian, Latina, and White women ages 18–22 and to determine vaccination completion rates among participants over 5 years. Design Using semi-structured interviews and medical record review, we assessed HPV knowledge and attitudes towards HPV vaccination among young women. We then determined their subsequent HPV vaccination initiation and completion rates. We used constructs from the Health Belief Model and methods based in grounded theory and content analysis to identify attitudes towards HPV vaccination cues to initiate vaccination, perception of HPV, and how communication about issues of sexuality may impact vaccine uptake. Participants We enrolled 132 African-American, Haitian, Latina, and White women aged 18–22 years who visited an urban academic medical center and two affiliated community health centers between the years 2007 and 2012. Main Outcome Measures Intent to vaccinate and actual vaccination rates Results Of 132 participants, 116 (90%) stated that they were somewhat or very likely to accept HPV vaccination if offered by their physician, but only 51% initiated the vaccination over the next 5 years. Seventy-eight percent of those who initiated vaccination completed the 3 doses of the HPV vaccine series. Forty-five percent (45%, n=50) of the adolescents who started the series completed three doses over a five year period: forty-two percent African-American (n=16), thirty-three percent Haitian (n=13), sixty-three percent Latina (n=10), and sixty-five White young women (n=11) completed the three-dose series. Despite low knowledge, they reported high levels of trust in physicians and were willing to vaccinate if recommended by their physicians. Conclusion Desire for HPV vaccination is high among older adolescents, physician recommendation and use of every clinic visit opportunity may improve vaccine uptake in young women. More White young women completed the HPV vaccine series compared with other race and ethnic young women.

Knowledge of influenza vaccination recommendation and early vaccination uptake during the 2015–16 season among adults aged ≥18 years – United States

“…Several characteristics were independently associated with correct knowledge or awareness of the influenza vaccination recommendation after controlling for other factors. Both female gender and higher education were associated with correct knowledge, which is consistent with previous studies [33–39]. This findings are important for identifying intervention programs to improve awareness among those groups.…”

“…Similar significant racial/ethnic differences among adults in knowledge of other recommended vaccines such as herpes zoster vaccination [44] and human papillomavirus vaccination have been previously reported [36,39,45,46]. This finding might reflect lower prevalence of vaccination services being offered to black patients, and lower knowledge levels can limit the ability of patients to request vaccination when appropriate [36,39,45,46]. A lack of knowledge regarding recommended vaccinations could translate into a missed opportunity for protection against vaccine preventable diseases.…”

Knowledge of HPV and HPV Vaccine among Women Ages 19 to 26

“…One study found that Internet users have greater awareness of HPV and the HPV vaccine than Internet non-users (Kontos et al, 2012). Although women may learn about HPV from other sources, many report a preference for receiving HPV information from their health care provider, suggesting that providers can be a trusted source of information (Bellinger, Millegan, & Abdalla, 2015;Joseph et al, 2014;Sandfort & Pleasant, 2009). In addition to their role in communicating information, provider recommendation has been shown to affect whether patients receive HPV vaccination (Kessels et al, 2012;Perkins, Brogly, Adams, & Freund, 2012;Perkins, Lin, Silliman, Clark, & Hanchate, 2015).…”

“…For most of these topic areas, the proportion of participants that answered correctly was higher than in other studies. For example, although 93% of our population knew that HPV can cause cervical cancer, that question was correctly answered by 81% of females and males seeking care at a free, urban primary care clinic (Chau et al, 2014), 78% of male and female students at a large public university (Stanfort & Pleasant, 2009), 62% of a national sample of male and female adults (Blake et al, 2015), and 47% of young women 18 to 22 recruited at the pediatric and adolescent departments and affiliated community health centers of an urban academic medical center (Joseph et al, 2014). Our participants' higher knowledge scores and higher vaccine awareness may be related to the population under study.…”

Prevalence and predictors of human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination among young women surviving childhood cancer

“…Among population young adults, race, sexual behavior, and social history appear to have a particular influence on vaccine uptake [12, 15, 17, 18, 19, 20]. Although young women are old enough to independently consent to HPV vaccination, parental attitudes regarding vaccination also appear to play a key role in the formation of such perceptions [16].…”