South Carolina: Vaccine Adds Another Angle to "The Talk"

The availability of a vaccine against four types of the STD human papillomavirus has South Carolina parents of daughters wondering whether to approach the issue of vaccination from the standpoint of sexuality, cancer prevention or both.

HPV vaccination could be a good time to initiate a discussion about sexual health issues with one's daughter, said Dr. Julie Ballance, a Columbia pediatrician who has been approached by many parents asking about the vaccine. She recommends it for 11- and 12-year-olds, even if that seems young to parents. "They have to realize that the Centers for Disease Control says 80 percent of women will have had HPV by the time they are 50. It's a matter of protecting them before they are exposed," she said, adding "75 percent of high school seniors are sexually active."

At the University of South Carolina's Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, doctors at the specialty clinic are mentioning the vaccine to patients and parents, said department head Dr. Janice Bacon. Even in families that strongly advocate abstinence, girls may have sex before marriage and, since males can transmit HPV to women, a future husband's sexual history could put a wife at risk, she said.

CDC researchers estimate more than 6 million Americans are newly HPV-infected each year, many of them teens and young adults.

Fully explain the HPV vaccine to teens, advises Dr. Kenneth Alexander of Chicago's Comer Children's Hospital. However, he conceded that could be tricky with preteens.

Most likely, Karen Hales, a Slidell, La., mother of an 11-year-old, will approach the HPV vaccine as about cancer prevention. "And our pediatrician will manage the rest with me in the room," she said.

Several studies show parents' prominent concerns about the vaccine are with the seriousness of the disease and vaccine efficacy, said Susan Rosenthal, a pediatric psychologist at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston. She recommends an "apprenticeship model" to explain how HPV is contracted, which assumes teens make increasingly independent health decisions as they get older. "You meet the kid where they are in terms of what information they're ready for."

Back to other news for September 14, 2006