Teenage girls residing in impoverished, majority Hispanic communities had the highest rates of receiving at least one dose of the human papillomavirus vaccine, according to a study published in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention and covered by the Oncology Nurse Advisor.
For the study, researchers analyzed data from 20,565 teenage participants in the CDC's 2011 and 2012 National Immunization Survey. The participants were females between 13 and 17 years of age for whom provider-verified vaccination records were obtainable.
The study found the ethnic composition of the communities in which the girls lived was the most significant geographic determinant affecting immunization rates. In primarily Hispanic communities, 69 percent of the study group received at least one dose of HPV vaccine. Non-Hispanic white communities carried a 50 percent immunization rate and non-Hispanic black communities had a rate of 54 percent. For Hispanic girls living in majority white communities, the rate of immunization dropped to about 49 percent.
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The study's first author Kevin A. Henry, PhD, an assistant professor in the Department of Geography and Urban Studies at Temple University in Philadelphia, said in the Oncology Nurse Advisor article, "The higher HPV vaccination rates among girls living in poor communities and majority Hispanic communities, which also tend to have high poverty rates, are encouraging because these communities often have higher cervical cancer rates, but continued cervical cancer screening of vaccinated and unvaccinated women is needed because the vaccine does not cover all cancer-causing HPV types and sexually active women could have been infected prior to vaccination...the higher HPV vaccination rates in these groups also provide some evidence supporting successful health care practice and community-based interventions."
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