New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/
Accessed 30 March 2013

A Push for HPV Vaccinations
By SABRINA TAVERNISE

Extract
The government recommended years ago that all adolescent girls get a vaccine to protect against cervical cancer. But nearly seven years after it first came to market, an overwhelming majority of girls have yet to be inoculated.

Just 35 percent of girls 13 to 17 have received a full course of the vaccine, which inoculates against the strains of human papillomavirus that can cause cervical cancer, according to 2011 data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And a study in Pediatrics this month, also based on C.D.C. data, says the intent to vaccinate is declining: 44 percent of parents in 2010 said they did not intend to vaccinate, up from 40 percent in 2008.

Alarmed by the stubbornly low rates, doctors and federal health officials are brainstorming about how to get more children vaccinated.

“Behind these numbers are people who will develop cervical cancer that could have been prevented,” said Dr. Bruce Gellin, director of the National Vaccine Program Office at the Department of Health and Human Services…

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/25/a-push-for-hpv-vaccinations/