Take a Number: The HPV Vaccine Gains Ground Among U.S. Teenagers
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Matthew Busch for The Washington Post, via Getty Images
More than half of all American teenagers are getting vaccinated against human papillomavirus, and the rate is rising over time, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Sixty percent of adolescents received one or more doses of the HPV vaccine in 2016, an increase of 4 percentage points from 2015, researchers found. About a decade ago, the figure was less than 30 percent.
“We’re really encouraged to see this finding,” said Shannon Stokley, a co-author of the report and associate director for science at the Immunization Services Division of the C.D.C.
The vaccine protects against strains of HPV that can cause cancers of the cervix, penis, anus and back of the throat. Close to half of all Americans are infected at any given time, and nearly 32,000 get cancer from the virus each year.
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About 90 percent of those cases could be prevented with the vaccine, according to the C.D.C. The agency used to recommend three doses, but new guidelines introduced last year amended that to two doses for adolescents younger than age 15.
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