Feasibility of an enhanced educational curriculum for medical students aimed at increasing HPV health literacy and skills in providing primary HPV-related cancer prevention Grant uri icon

abstract

  • Human Papillomavirus (HPV) is the most common sexually transmitted infection in the US. Some strains of HPV cause genital warts and others can lead to anogenital (i.e. cervical, anal, vaginal, penile, and vulvar) and oropharyngeal cancers in both men and women. Substantial proportions of HPV-related morbidities and deaths may be prevented through vaccination. Even though it has been a decade since the HPV vaccine was approved in June 2006, there is still a lack of widespread uptake of this cancer-preventing vaccine. Healthcare provider recommendation is the single best predictor of adolescent vaccination against HPV. However, studies have found that providers are not in compliance with ACIP and American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) recommendations and are not consistently recommending the HPV vaccine, bundling it with other recommended pre-teen vaccines such as TDAP and Meningococcal Vaccine. It is critical to determine factors that can affect providers' HPV vaccination practices. Factors that may be associated with recommendation practices of the HPV vaccine among providers is their HPV health literacy and their attitude toward vaccination as attitudes have been shown to predict recommendation behavior even more strongly than professional guidelines. To fill these gaps, our objectives are as follows: Objective 1. Assess HPV health literacy skills and HPV prevention practices (or intended practices) of current and future physicians in pediatrics and family medicine in North Carolina. Objective 2. Review curriculum used to teach about HPV and HPV prevention practices among all accredited Schools of Medicine and Schools of Osteopathic Medicine in the US. Objective 3. Evaluate the feasibility of an enhanced training curricula for medical students to increase HPV health literacy, self-efficacy, and intention to provide primary HPV prevention to patients. Our study is innovative in two primary ways, 1) it is the first study to provide important state-level data regarding HPV-related health literacy skills and practices of medical health providers (i.e. pediatrics and family medicine) and medical students in NC, national data on HPV-related medical school curricula for the US, and will help to identify geographic and demographic trends in medical school training regarding HPV-related content, and 2) it will be the first study to evaluate the feasibility of enhanced training curricula for medical students to engage in primary HPV-related prevention.

date/time interval

  • September 2017 - December 2020