St. Jude and other top U.S. cancer centers call for urgent action to get cancer-preventing HPV vaccination back on track

May 20, 2021

St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital partnered with 71 other National Cancer Institute (NCI)-designated cancer centers and organizations to issue a joint statement urging the nation’s health care systems, physicians, parents and children, and young adults to get HPV vaccinations back on track. Specifically, NCI Cancer Centers strongly encourage the following immediate action steps:

Health care systems and providers, please immediately identify and contact adolescents under your care who are due for vaccinations and use every opportunity to encourage and complete vaccination;
Parents, please vaccinate your adolescents as soon as possible.

Dramatic drops in annual well-child visits and immunizations during the COVID-19 pandemic have caused a significant vaccination gap and lag in vital preventive services among U.S. children and adolescents—especially for the HPV vaccine. The pandemic also has exacerbated health disparities, leaving underserved adolescents at even greater risk for missed doses of this cancer prevention vaccine.

“The HPV vaccine is key to preventing several types of cancer. The pandemic has caused a worrisome vaccination gap in the U.S., especially for adolescents,” said Charles W. M. Roberts, M.D., Ph.D., director of the St. Jude Comprehensive Cancer Center and executive vice president at St. Jude. “Well-child doctor visits and back-to-school vaccinations are down. To protect our children and communities, we must get back on track as a nation with adolescent vaccination, including HPV vaccination.”

Nearly 80 million Americans – 1 out of every 4 people – are infected with HPV, a virus that causes six types of cancers. Of those millions, nearly 36,000 will be diagnosed with an HPV-related cancer this year. Despite those staggering figures and the availability of a vaccine to prevent HPV infections, HPV vaccination rates remain significantly lower than other recommended adolescent vaccines in the U.S. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, HPV vaccination rates lagged far behind other vaccines and other countries’ HPV vaccination rates. According to 2019 data from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), just more than half (54%) of adolescents were up to date on the HPV vaccine.

Those numbers have declined dangerously since the pandemic:

Early in the pandemic, HPV vaccination rates among adolescents fell by 75%, resulting in a large cohort of unvaccinated children.
Since March 2020, an estimated one million doses of HPV vaccine have been missed by adolescents with public insurance— a decline of 21% over pre-pandemic levels.
Adolescents with private insurance may be missing hundreds of thousands of doses of HPV vaccine.

The U.S. has recommended routine HPV vaccination for females since 2006, and for males since 2011. Current recommendations are for routine vaccination at ages 11 or 12 or starting at age 9. Catch-up HPV vaccination is recommended through age 26. Adults aged 27 through 45 should talk with their health care providers about HPV vaccination because some people who have not been vaccinated might benefit. The HPV vaccine series is two doses for children who get the first dose at ages 9 through 14 and three doses for those who get the first dose at age 15 and older or for immunocompromised people.

NCI Cancer Centers strongly encourage parents to vaccinate their adolescents as soon as possible. The CDC recently authorized COVID-19 vaccination for 12-15-year-old children allowing for missed doses of routinely recommended vaccines, including HPV, to be administered at the same time. NCI Cancer Centers strongly urge action by health care systems and health care providers to identify and contact adolescents due for vaccinations and to use every opportunity to encourage and complete vaccination.

“HPV vaccination is cancer prevention,” said Heather Brandt, Ph.D., director of the HPV Cancer Prevention Program at St. Jude and coordinator for the joint statement from NCI Cancer Centers. “Now is the time to catch up on missed doses of HPV vaccine to prevent future cancers. Vaccinating our adolescents against COVID-19 is the perfect opportunity to ensure children are also protected from HPV. This is particularly important among populations that have experienced intensified inequities as a result of the pandemic, including Black, Indigenous and other people of color; rural; sexual minority; and medically underserved adolescents.”

More information on HPV is available from the CDC and National HPV Vaccination Roundtable. This is the fourth time that all NCI-designated cancer centers have come together to issue a national call to action. All 71 cancer centers unanimously share the goal of sending a powerful message to parents, adolescents and health care providers about the importance of HPV vaccination for the elimination of HPV-related cancers. Organizations endorsing this statement include the Association of American Cancer Institutes; American Association for Cancer Research; American Cancer Society; American Society of Clinical Oncology; American Society of Pediatric Hematology/Oncology; American Society of Preventive Oncology; and the Prevent Cancer Foundation. For the full list of endorsing organizations, visit stjude.org.