Reducing perceived barriers
Meanwhile, however, parents’ other reasons for avoiding the vaccine became less prevalent throughout most of the study period. For each year between 2013 and 2020, the proportion of parents saying they didn’t intend to get their children the HPV vaccine because it was “not recommended” decreased by 6.8%.
Similarly, avoiding the vaccine due to “lack of knowledge” declined 9.9%, and avoidance because the child was “not sexually active” declined 5.9% each year from 2013 to 2020. No difference occurred during that time period regarding how frequently parents cited that the vaccine was “not necessary.”
“Decreases in the percentage of parents/guardians citing lack of provider recommendation, lack of knowledge, and child ‘not sexually active’ as the main reason for HPV vaccine hesitancy ... are encouraging and suggest that interventions have been successful in reducing perceived barriers to HPV vaccination,” the authors wrote.
Dr. Bednarczyk agreed that these findings were encouraging, underscoring that outreach and support for health care providers to give strong recommendations for the vaccine need to continue.
“But additionally, we need to find better ways to communicate about vaccine safety,” Dr. Bednarczyk said. “Seeing that the number of parents citing safety concerns as the primary barrier has not changed much between 2016 and 2020, but that the percent of parents having those concerns increased, likely means there is a stable part of the population with these safety concerns, and as more adolescents are getting vaccinated against HPV, the relative contribution of safety concerns is increasing.” A key way to address those concerns includes “engaging with our trusted community partners and giving them the tools to discuss the safety of HPV vaccination with members of the community,” he said.
Debunking misinformation
Like the authors, Dr. Bednarczyk pointed out several conditions that parents erroneously worry could be caused by the HPV vaccine, but he emphasized that simply telling parents those misconceptions are untrue is insufficient to allay fears.
“It’s important for both clinicians and community partners to recognize we cannot just present a list of facts and figures and statistics to parents to reassure them and hope that this works,” Dr. Bednarczyk said. “Effective communication, strong narratives to illustrate this knowledge, and engagement with not just clinicians but community partners and other trusted sources is needed.” Dr. Bednarczyk continues to support the evidence-based model of presumptive recommendations, which does not remove parental autonomy but simplifies vaccine messaging about what’s recommended, “but clinicians need to be prepared with both the data and effective ways to communicate it to address questions if they come up after the presumptive recommendation is given,” he added.
The researchers pointed out that their study data were collected before the pandemic, so “it is reasonable to expect that HPV vaccine–related safety concerns may continue to rise because of the plethora of misinformation surrounding coronavirus disease 2019 vaccination.”
Dr. Bednarczyk said it will be important to see in future research whether shifts in beliefs about the HPV vaccine have occurred in the midst of the pandemic and afterward.
“As the authors stated, it’s important to remember that HPV vaccination has consistently been shown to be safe and effective,” Dr. Bednarczyk said. “But those research findings are not seeming to resonate with parents, highlighting how we need to improve our outreach and communication work.”
The research did not receive external funding. A coauthor is a scientific adviser to Navigating Cancer. The other authors and Dr. Bednarczyk had no disclosures.