January 6, 2011
This will not be the first time I have focused on HPV… In fact, about a year ago, I posted on this topic. Today, I want to mention that Janice Krieger and some of her colleagues at Ohio State published an article in Human Communication Research about the importance of mothers talking to daughters about HPV [http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-2958.2010.01395.x/abstract]. Another article published in the Spring of 2010 has similar conclusions [http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/abstract/125/5/982].
Mothers’ confidence about talking to their daughters about HPV — believing that they had knowledge and could answer their daughter’s questions — had an important effect on the likelihood of talking. Also, mothers’ belief that the HPV vaccine is an effective response in preventing cervical cancer motivated them to have these conversations. Both findings emphasize the need to communicate about HPV and the HPV vaccine to form knowledge. The findings, as the authors note, also bring to light a need to observe these actual conversations and their effects. For example, mothers may talk about HPV as being a common and easily transmissible virus. Or, mothers might say that HPV causes cervical cancer. The latter might lead daughters to assume that brothers and male friends are not at risk for HPV. That would be an inaccurate conclusion.
I have a granddaughter who is seven years old. She happens to live in Texas. This is one of the states that considered making the HPV vaccine mandatory in order to be in public school [http://politifact.com/texas/statements/2010/feb/06/rick-perry/perry-says-hpv-vaccine-he-mandated-would-have-been/]. It didn’t happen … for various reasons. For one, the vaccine is really a series of three shots — not one. The cost for the three shots is about three hundred dollars [http://cancer.about.com/od/hp1/f/hpvvaccinecost.htm]. Time and money… and debate about sexuality.. and religion… then there is the belief that government should not mandate anything… How do we communicate strategically to build mothers’ confidence to talk about those things? And what do we say to boys as well?
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/29/us/29vaccine.html
