Assessment of Variability in Intent to Vaccinate against HPV among Caregivers of Pediatric Patients

Purpose: HPV is the leading STD in the United States and the primary cause of cervical cancer in women worldwide. The HPV vaccine has a high success rate in protecting against high-risk strains of HPV, however vaccination rates are low. The purpose of this study is to identify barriers to vaccination administration by focusing on racial disparities when factoring income, education, and provider recommendation for the vaccine as effect modifiers. Methods: Multiple choice surveys were given to the parents/guardians of pediatric patients of the department of Pediatrics that consisted of 50 questions regarding the patient’s socioeconomic status and knowledge/opinions of HPV and the vaccine. A five to ten-minute education session was given after the encounter and a handout about HPV and the vaccine was given to parent/guardian to take home. Ordinal logistic regression was performed in order to obtain results. Results: Ordinal Regression showed that parents with some higher education, incomes between 40,000-70,000 a year, and who are Non-Hispanic whites had decreased intent to vaccinate their children. Discussion: The study focused on obtaining factors such as income, education, and race as effect modifiers in relation to the intent to vaccinate. Race was the most influential factor, and Non-Hispanic Caucasians appeared to be less likely to vaccinate than Hispanic populations, contrary to multiple studies. Secondly, lower levels of education did not correlate with less intent to vaccinate. Those with some higher education were less likely to want to vaccinate their children, while those with high school or below had more intent. Lastly, the more income an individual had, the less likely they were willing to vaccinate. All findings were contrary to the hypothesis that Hispanic populations, lower income, and lower education levels would have less intent to vaccinate. Some factors in the study did not have enough data to compute a substantiated analysis. Suggestions for further research would be to collect more surveys from missing demographics and clarification of questions to avoid confusion about intent to vaccinate. Barriers were finding subjects with children in target age groups. Conclusion: Race, income, and education did have an effect on whether a parent had intent to vaccinate their child with the HPV vaccine. However, the results showed that those who were Non-Hispanic Caucasians, higher income, and obtained some higher education were less likely to want to vaccinate their children in comparison to other populations. Multiple studies showed that minorities and lower income populations were less likely to get the vaccine series due to lack of knowledge and less provider recommendation, though they do not investigate the intention to vaccinate. Provider recommendation seemed to be the most influential factor in increasing vaccination rates in these studies. This project is a living study and will be edited to provide more target questions for certain demographics and clarify questions that surveyors had difficulty answering.