Ashida and Askelson Publish Study Finding Significant Missed Opportunities for HPV Vaccination
Sato Ashida, senior faculty affiliate in the Health Policy Research Program, and Natoshia Askelson, senior research fellow in the Health Policy Research Program, published their report titled "The Use of Medical Claims Data for Identifying Missed Opportunities for HPV Immunization Among Privately Insured Adolescents in the State of Iowa," on June 17.
The goal of the project was to explore low HPV vaccination rates among adolescents. The researchers sought to do this by quantifying the rate of low HPV vaccination and missed vaccination opportunities among adolescents aged 11 to 13 in the state of Iowa, the results of which were then compared by gender and rurality. The results showed that over half of adolescents failed to initiate vaccination by the age of 13 and the majority of missed vaccination opportunities occurred prior to initiation.