Impact of a physician recommendation

Abstract

HPV vaccination has failed to achieve uptake comparable to the other adolescent-specific vaccines. Gargano et al. conducted a survey of parents of adolescents in a single Georgia county and found uptake similar to national surveys. They also found among the most commonly cited reasons for receiving vaccines a recommendation from a health care provider and among the most commonly cited reasons for not getting any of the adolescent vaccines were concerns for adverse effects. Of note, they found that the recommendation for any one vaccine had a positive effect on the uptake of other vaccines. Their findings of the importance of provider recommendations matched findings from other studies of adolescent vaccines, infant vaccines, and adult vaccines. This is despite flaws in their study including a very poor response rate (effectively 4.5%) of those surveyed and in their reporting including a lack of details of survey methods. Local surveys of vaccination have much to offer the national and local discussion about immunization delivery and how delivery should be optimized, but such surveys should use standardized approaches as well as pursue more comprehensive investigations at the local level to address the nuances national complex-cluster surveys cannot.

Keywords: CDC, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; HPV, human papillomavirus; MCV, meningococcal conjugate vaccine; NIS-Teen, National Immunization Survey of Teens; OR, odds ratio; Tdap, tetanus toxoid, reduced diphtheria toxoid and acellular pertussis vaccine; aOR, adjusted odds ratio; adolescent; adolescent health services; attitude to health; diphtheria-tetanus vaccine; immunization; meningococcal vaccines; papillomavirus vaccines; patient acceptance of health care; preventive health services; tetanus toxoid; treatment refusal; vaccination; vaccines.