Cates awarded NIH grant to promote HPV vaccination in boys

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has awarded a $407,000 grant to Joan Cates, a researcher in the UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media, to develop and implement a campaign to raise awareness about the Human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine among parent, healthcare providers and pre-teen boys.

HPV is the most common sexually transmitted virus in the United States and infects half of sexually active males and females. The HPV vaccine can prevent genital warts and the cancers caused by infection with the virus, yet the Centers for Disease Control estimates that only 20 percent of females and 2 percent of males get vaccinated.

Cates says that underutilization and low parental awareness of the vaccine, which began being recommended routinely for males in late 2011, has resulted in missed opportunities to reduce HPV and associated cancers in males.

The NIH grant helps to fund a social marketing campaign titled “Protect Him” for parents in 13 N.C. counties with radio announcements, posters, brochures and a website. It also funds collaboration with healthcare providers of pre-teen boys to raise parental awareness of HPV vaccine for males.

It builds on the work of Cates and her colleagues – funded by a $10,000 pilot award from the NC Translational and Clinical Sciences (NC TraCS) Institute – that designed and tested messages to promote vaccination of adolescent boys. Their research, published in March in the journal Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health, found the messages that most motivate parents focus on risk of HPV infection and include images of parents with their sons.

By Marla Vacek Broadfoot