The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) has recommended routine vaccination of girls ages 11 and 12 with three doses of HPV vaccine since shortly after the quadrivalent HPV vaccine -- Gardasil -- was approved in 2006. In 2009, a bivalent HPV vaccine, Cervarix, was cleared by the FDA and incorporated into the vaccination recommendations. While coverage for girls appears to be stalled, the agency report said, 6.8% of boys have had all three doses and 20.8% have had at least one, up from 1.3% and 8.3%, respectively, in 2011. The committee also recommends that preteens get one dose of Tdap, one of MenACWY, and three doses of HPV vaccine. For this analysis, CDC investigators looked at data for 19,199 adolescents, including 9,058 girls and 10,141 boys, collected from parents or guardians in telephone interviews. One implication of the findings is that reaching the 80% targets is possible, the agency report said, but the gaps between coverage with Tdap and other vaccines suggest "many opportunities [to immunize teens] are being missed." The report also noted that vaccine coverage varies markedly from state to state. For instance, while Tdap coverage meets the national target, state coverage varied from a low of 53.5% in Mississippi to a high of 96.3% in New Hampshire. For MenACWY, rates ranged from 37.5% in Arkansas to 94.3% in Rhode Island. Rhode Island also led the way when it came to HPV vaccination: 57.7% of girls and 17.7% of boys had gotten all three doses. A total of 36 states met or exceeded national Tdap targets and 12 met or exceeded MenACWY targets, but none met the 80% national target for HPV vaccination among females. The CDC cautioned that household response rates for the NIS-Teen were low and only between 56% and 62% of the respondents also had adequate provider-verified immunization data. Also, estimates for rates in areas where sample sizes were less than 1,000 might be unreliable, the investigators noted. Nonetheless, the report writers concluded, "achieving high vaccination coverage among adolescents is feasible, and progress is evident for most vaccines.
Posted on: Fri, 30 Aug 2013 13:20:35 +0000
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