Moving From Evidence to Impact for HPV Vaccination: the critical role of translation and communication in epidemiology

Abstract

In response to Yih and Maro, et al., we highlight the importance of moving beyond epidemiologic research on HPV vaccine safety to focus on translation of this strong evidence-base into successful vaccine safety communication strategies to bolster vaccine uptake. The potential of the HPV vaccine to reduce cancer is substantial and yet actual vaccination rates in the United States are disappointingly low in comparison to other routine childhood vaccines with similar safety profiles. This is no doubt, in part, due to persistent parental safety concerns. In 2016, safety remained the second most common reason for lack of vaccination intent by parents of unvaccinated adolescents. While the strong study by Yih and Maro, et al., makes use of a novel statistical method and a large medical claims database to confirm the low occurrence of adverse events following HPV vaccination observed globally, their study also highlights a key challenge for epidemiologists—translating our research findings to other public health domains, so that evidence-informed communication strategies can be used to disseminate the information in a way that is understandable and useful to the public. Moving forward, multidisciplinary research teams will be essential to ensure our epidemiologic findings have a broad public health impact.