6 Clinical Trials for Various Conditions
For the identified groups of patients (survivors of childhood cancer and youth with sickle cell disease) the investigators want to better understand the barriers to, and facilitators of, HPV vaccination. Through HCP interviews the investigators will also assess both attitudinal and logistical obstacles to HPV vaccination. Some subspecialty HCPs may believe, for instance, that it is the primary care provider's responsibility to vaccinate or they may be unfamiliar with the requirement to enter vaccination data into CHIRP. Also, in some cases HPV vaccine may not be readily available in subspecialty clinic locations and/or subspecialty HCPs may not be Vaccines for Children (VFC) providers. Participants: the investigators will focus on two patient groups: survivors of childhood cancer, which includes children aged 9-21 years who have completed active therapy for cancer and are eligible for vaccination, and sickle cell disease, which includes children aged 9-21 years with a diagnosis of sickle cell disease. The investigators will recruit parents of children aged 9-21 years and older adolescents aged 18-21 years. For pediatric patients, the investigators selected a lower age of 9 years because HPV vaccine is licensed down to 9 years of age, and an upper limit of 21 years, as that is considered the upper bound of adolescence by the American Academy of Pediatrics. For patients 9-17 years of age, only parents will be interviewed by video or phone because parents are the vaccine decision-makers. For patients 18-21 years of age, the investigators will interview both young adults and their parents, because, while the young adult has legal decision-making capacity, in reality, the decision is frequently made jointly by the young adult and parent, and older adolescents are frequently unwilling to go against their parents' wishes. All research procedures will be conducted in English. Participants will be excluded if they have an intellectual disability or severe medical illness such that they are unable to consent or to understand the questions.
Since 2019, the HPV working group of the University of Virginia Cancer Center's Southwest Virginia Community Advisory Board has developed and executed strategies to increase regional HPV vaccination rates. Members collaboratively developed Appalachian Voices for Health, a multi-level media production and social marketing intervention. This novel intervention builds on the past efforts of the working group and the engaged organizations; takes into account the impact of vaccine hesitancy on HPV vaccination uptake; and incorporates best practices. Through the intervention, Nursing and Dental Assistant students from Mountain Empire Community College will develop PSAs after receiving training about HPV vaccination and health communication. These PSAs will be used in a social marketing campaign executed through a regional transportation system managed by Mountain Empire Older Citizens. Specifically, the trial's aims are three-fold: assess the intervention's impact on community members' and students' HPV vaccine hesitancy (Aim 1) and perceptions and actions related to HPV vaccination (Aim 2) and evaluate other feasibility indicators at the community-, student-, organizational-, and process levels (Aim 3). The research team will use a concurrent mix-methods approach to assess feasibility indicators. Aims will be assessed using surveys, focus groups, meeting minutes, and implementation records. Data will be analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics and content coding. Determination of the intervention's feasibility will consider the achievement benchmarks for feasibility indicators individually and collectively. Data will be used to inform refinement and future testing of Appalachian Voices for Health.
The goal of this project is to test the efficacy of a chatbot intervention for reducing HPV vaccine hesitancy among African American parents. An online experiment will be conducted to test the effectiveness of the chatbot intervention with African American parents. Results of this project will inform future communication interventions for reducing vaccine hesitancy among African American parents.
This research aims to identify communication strategies to improve the uptake of vaccines using an experimental design, focusing on the Human Papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine, which is highly effective in preventing HPV-related cancers. However, low HPV vaccination rates among adults remain a significant public health challenge. Although randomized controlled trials (RCTs) have demonstrated that interventions can increase vaccine uptake in children, few RCTs have been conducted on adults. To address this gap, a multidisciplinary investigative team with expertise in communication, medicine, nursing, and behavior-change intervention research, and a history of extensive collaboration, will conduct a survey experiment on a national sample of over 3,689 adults to identify the most promising theory-based messages to strengthen HPV vaccine intentions.
The benefits of adolescent vaccines are well known for preventing meningococcal infection and human papillomavirus (HPV)-related pre-cancerous lesions. Yet, many adolescents in the United States (US) remain under-vaccinated, with vaccination rates among rural adolescents significantly lower than among their urban peers. In addition, there are urban-rural disparities in the coverage of HPV vaccine, particularly in Southern states like North and South Carolina, which currently fall below the Healthy People 2020 goal of ≥80% coverage. The goal of the proposed study is to evaluate the feasibility and preliminary efficacy of a school-based intervention for increasing vaccine uptake among adolescents in rural North and South Carolina.
The investigators will recruit a national sample of parents of 7-10-year-olds to complete an argument strength ranking for either a simple forwarding message or between 3 and 6 randomly selected arguments from an overall set of 50 to 100 messages identified from various online sources. Parents will rate each message they see on measures of perceived argument strength/PME. Parents will also answer sociodemographic questions and then rank the believability of a set of anti-vaccine messages identified in a different study. Study findings will contribute valuable information to understanding the effectiveness of different inoculation messages.