Health care providers play a key role in recommending the human papillomavirus vaccination for survivors of childhood cancer, according to a study from UAB and St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

“Survivors of childhood cancer are at increased risk for developing HPV-related second cancers,” said Wendy Landier, Ph.D., co-principal investigator of the National Institutes of Health-funded study and associate professor in the UAB Division of Pediatric Hematology and Oncology. “The HPV vaccine is effective in preventing infection with the oncogenic HPV types responsible for the large majority of HPV-related cancers in this high-risk population.”The study, published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, highlights the low rate of vaccine initiation among 13- to 26-year-old cancer survivors at 23.8 percent, compared with age-matched peers in the U.S. population, who have a vaccination rate of 40.5 percent. 

Over half of the survivors or parents who reported receiving a recommendation for the HPV vaccine from a health care provider had received the vaccine. Among survivors who did not receive a provider recommendation, only one in 20 initiated the vaccine.

Read the story on UAB News.