Preface

The President's Cancer Panel (PCP, the Panel), established by the National Cancer Act of 1971 (P.L. 92-218), is charged with monitoring progress of the National Cancer Program and identifying barriers to its fullest and most rapid implementation. The Panel investigates topics of high importance to the National Cancer Program, collecting information through a series of meetings and additional information gathering. Findings and recommendations are compiled in reports to the President of the United States. While reports are to the President, they are also for a larger group of stakeholders, public and private, that comprise the National Cancer Program. Together, these organizations and others can make a positive difference in accelerating progress against cancer.

For its 2012-2013 series, the Panel chose to focus on human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccines, with the goal of catalyzing stakeholders to accelerate uptake of these effective but underused interventions to prevent cancers and other diseases and conditions caused by HPV. Such a significant opportunity to prevent cancers in the U.S. and around the world is rare. The Panel convened four workshops on HPV vaccination to gather information from many stakeholders in this area, including representatives from the public, academic, nongovernmental, and private sectors with expertise and responsibility in HPV-associated cancer research, vaccine-related public health policy, and vaccine program development and implementation. Three workshops focused on HPV vaccination in the United States. The fourth focused on issues related to global HPV vaccination. (See Appendix A for more information on the workshops.)

HPV-associated cancers are life-threatening, and the incidence of some is increasing in the United States and many other countries. Many of these cancers are preventable by HPV vaccines. The U.S. Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) recommends HPV vaccination for adolescents and young adults. This recommendation has been endorsed and/or echoed by the National Cancer Institute (NCI), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and numerous U.S. medical professional societies and other organizations.* Increased uptake of HPV vaccines for females also is an objective of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Healthy People 2020 initiative.[1-6] The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends that HPV vaccines be integrated into national immunization programs whenever possible.[7]† Panel members communicated with representatives of many of these organizations and were impressed by their commitment to increase uptake of HPV vaccines.

Despite strong recommendations from experts in the medical and public health fields, rates of U.S. HPV vaccination have fallen short of target levels. It will take concerted action by multiple individuals and organizations to increase HPV vaccine uptake. In this report, the Panel presents high-priority goals and objectives that stakeholders should embrace to increase uptake of HPV vaccines. In many cases, these recommendations call for implementation of strategies shown to be effective for increasing uptake of other vaccines.[8] The Panel's recommendations are consistent with those issued by the National Vaccine Advisory Committee (NVAC) for improving uptake of vaccines in general [9] and adolescent vaccines in particular.[10,11] The U.S. National Cancer Program, in aggregate, has a major opportunity to accelerate uptake of HPV vaccines in the United States and support their adoption around the world. The Panel believes that concerted action could create a tipping point that would lead to large increases in HPV vaccine uptake. The potential to prevent cervical and other cancers on a global scale is achievable.

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