UNC School of Medicine encourages HPV vaccines for cancer prevention

The UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center recently endorsed the HPV vaccine as a cancer prevention measure, just in time for World Cancer Day on Feb. 4.

World Cancer Day, created in 2000, is a day for those affected by cancer to bring awareness and information to the world, while HPV is the most common sexually transmitted infection in the United States and is also the leading cause of cervical cancer.

The HPV vaccine is supposed to be administered in three doses over six months and provides nearly 100 percent protection from the virus.

In a press release, Barbara Rimer, dean of UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health, said it’s important to promote the HPV vaccine in local communities.

“We are confident that if HPV vaccination for girls and boys is made a public health priority, hundreds of thousands will be protected from these HPV-associated diseases and cancers over their lifetimes,” Rimer said.

According to the press release, fewer than 40 percent of girls and about 21 percent of boys are reported to have done all three doses.

Emma Holcomb, a sophomore and an assistant at the UNC Institute for Global Health and Infectious Diseases who prefers the pronoun they, said there is room to improve the HPV conversation among young people and wants to end the stigma surrounding HPV.

Holcomb said this is a vaccine everyone needs, and it’s important to make that clear.

“I think a lot of people don’t want to talk about (HPV) because it’s about sex, and people don’t really want to talk about sex,” they said. “It’s really about normalizing that conversation.”

According to the National Cancer Institute, worldwide usage of HPV vaccines would reduce cervical cancer incidence by two-thirds or higher and would therefore reduce health care costs.

Cancer prevention is something those at Camp Kesem, a camp designed to help kids with parents affected by cancer, feel strongly about. Isabel Marrero, a UNC sophomore, said cancer transcends just the patient.

“I think a lot of the time people think that cancer just affects the person who has it, but what (Camp Kesem) really focuses on is the people who get hurt because they have a loved one who is affected with cancer,” she said.

North Carolina is one of six jurisdictions recognized by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as showing year over year increases in the rates of girls receiving more than one dose of the vaccine in 2014.

Noel Brewer, a professor at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health, said in the press release that doctors should be more active in recommending the vaccine.

“Doctors often give low-quality recommendations for HPV vaccine,” he said.

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