HPV Vaccination among Pediatric Patients in a Safety Net Healthcare Setting
The Dan L. Duncan Comprehensive Cancer Center’s Office of Outreach and Health Disparities was awarded a three-year, $1.2 million expansion grant from the Cancer Prevention & Research Institute of Texas. The goal of the program is to increase HPV vaccination and tobacco prevention among pediatric patients at Harris County’s safety-net healthcare system, Harris Health System and collaborating charitable clinics, using the Community Network for Cancer Prevention model.
This project aims to increase the proportion of pediatric patients at Harris Health System and partnering community clinics that initiate and complete the HPV vaccine series, promote continuous performance improvement through ongoing process evaluation and reporting, and evidence-based tobacco prevention interventions by a healthcare provider. These goals will be accomplished by training pediatric providers to give strong HPV vaccine recommendations; developing and implementing linguistically- and culturally-appropriate patient/parent education videos; deployment of tiered tracking, patient reminder/recall, and patient navigation services; and utilization of evaluation strategies.
We are working to defragment HPV vaccine delivery by expanding the role of our patient navigation team. Navigators enter vaccination data for the Harris Health Troubleshooters Mobile Vaccine Unit. Through this collaboration between patient navigators and mobile unit staff, we expect to increase HPV vaccine documentation, leading to increased initiation and completion rates.
A strong provider recommendation is the primary factor influencing parents’/caregivers’ decision to vaccinate their children against human papillomavirus (HPV), which can lead to up to six types of cancers, including cervical and head and neck cancer.
View our videos in English and Spanish which were developed to prepare parents/caregivers of vaccine-age children eligible to receive a strong HPV vaccination recommendation from their provider.
Learn more about HPV and the HPV vaccine.
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