Human papillomavirus vaccine coverage in male-male partnerships attending a sexual health clinic in Melbourne, Australia

ABSTRACT

We aimed to investigate the sexual mixing by human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination status in male-male partnerships and estimate the proportion of male-male partnerships protected against HPV. We analyzed male-male partnerships attending the Melbourne Sexual Health Center between 2018 and 2019. Data on self-reported HPV vaccination status were collected. Newman’s assortativity coefficient was used to examine the sexual mixing by HPV vaccination status. Assortativity refers to the tendency of individuals to have partners with similar characteristics (i.e. same vaccination status). Of 321 male-male partnerships where both men reported their HPV vaccination status, 52.6% (95% CI: 47.0–58.2%) partnerships had both men vaccinated, 32.1% (95% CI: 27.0–37.5%) partnerships had only one man vaccinated, and 15.3% (95% CI: 11.5–19.7%) had both men unvaccinated. The assortativity on HPV vaccination status was moderate (assortativity coefficient = 0.265, 95% CI: 0.196–0.335). There were about 15% of male-male partnerships where both men were not protected against HPV. Interventions targeting vaccinated individuals to encourage their unvaccinated partners to be vaccinated might increase the HPV vaccine coverage.

KEYWORDS:

• Vaccination
• prevention
• cancer
• immunisation
• assortative mixing
• men who have sex with men

Disclosure statement

EPFC has received educational grants from Seqirus Australia and bioCSL to assist with education, training and academic purposes in the area of HPV outside the submitted work. EPFC has received an honorarium and research grants from Merck Sharp & Dohme and Roche outside the submitted work. All other authors have no conflicts of interest to declare that are relevant to the content of this article.

Data availability

All data analyzed during this study are included in this article.

Authors contribution

EPFC conceived the study and designed the study. TRP and HB were performed chart reviews to verify the partnerships. EPFC performed data analyses and wrote the first draft of the manuscript. EPFC, TRP, JJO, JT, ETA, MYC and CKF were involved in data interpretation, revising the manuscript for important intellectual content and approving the final version. The corresponding author had full access to all the data in the study and had final responsibility for the decision to submit for publication.

Supplemental material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed on the publisher’s website at https://doi.org/10.1080/21645515.2022.2068929

Additional information

Funding

EPFC and JJO are each supported by an Australian National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Emerging Leadership Investigator Grant (GNT1172873 and GNT1193955, respectively). CKF is supported by an Australian NHMRC Leadership Investigator Grant (GNT1172900).