HPV Vaccine Prevents Cancers — But the Public is Forgetting That

HPV causes not only cervical cancer but also head and neck, penile, anal, and vaginal cancer. An abstract presented at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) annual meeting showed, most Americans still don’t know this – despite there being a perfectly good vaccine that can prevent HPV since 2006. Not only that, the fraction of Americans who know that HPV can cause cervical cancer is dropping.

“People who know HPV causes cervical cancer has been decreasing since 2017,” said Eric Adjei Boakye, the presenter of the abstract and a researcher at Henry Ford Health. Boakye looked at data surveying Americans nationally from 2014 to 2020. HPV related cancers are entirely preventable by the HPV vaccine. Clinicians, Boakye said, should make sure that their patients know that. See this article from STAT News here.