Diverse caregivers’ HPV vaccine-related awareness and knowledge

ABSTRACT

Objectives: To assess factors associated with HPV vaccine-related awareness and knowledge among caregivers of adolescents from five ethnic community groups in Utah.

Design: For this community-based participatory research study, we surveyed N = 228 caregivers of teens aged 11–17 years from African American, African refugee, American Indian/Alaskan Native, Hispanic/Latino, and Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander community groups in Utah about their HPV vaccine awareness and knowledge.

Results: Participants exhibited high awareness of cervical cancer (71.05%), moderate awareness of HPV (53.95%), and low awareness of the HPV vaccine (46.49%). HPV vaccine-related knowledge was mostly worse, with fewer than half the participants reporting knowing that HPV can cause cervical cancer (46.93%), that most people are infected with HPV at some point in their lives (28.95%), that HPV is asymptomatic in females (36.40%) and males (37.28%), that the HPV vaccine is recommended for adolescent females (41.67%) and males (36.40%), and that the HPV vaccine requires more than one dose (27.19%). HPV vaccine-related awareness and knowledge were significantly associated with race/ethnicity, educational attainment, income, occupation, birthplace, parents’ birthplace, English usage, health insurance coverage, type of health insurance, and child having a primary care provider (all p < 0.05). HPV vaccine-related knowledge (p < 0.05) and awareness (p < 0.05) of caregivers were associated with a child in the household receiving the HPV vaccine.

Conclusion: Our findings indicate a need to develop educational interventions in collaboration with diverse communities in Utah. We underscore the importance of promoting knowledge about the existence of the HPV vaccine, as well as deeper HPV vaccine-related issues (e.g. HPV risks, treatment, and recommendations).

KEYWORDS:

• Papillomavirus Vaccines
• health knowledge
• attitudes
• Practice
• community-based participatory research
• Socioeconomic factors
• minority health
• patient education

Acknowledgements

The authors thank Guadalupe Tovar, Echo Warner, Ivoni Nash, and Maria Borrerro for assisting with the study, and the families who participated in this research. The authors also acknowledge the late Sylvia Rickard, former executive director of the Hispanic Health Care Task Force, who was a key contributor to the early phases of this study; and Grant Sunada from the University of Utah and Brenda Ralls from the Utah Department of Health for their feedback throughout the research process.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Primary Children’s Hospital Foundation, the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences from the National Institutes of Health award [number KL2TR001065]. The content of this paper is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health. The community-engaged research support reported in this publication was supported in part by the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number UL1TR001067.