Abstract for: Study of Interventions to Improve Human Papillomavirus (HPV) Vaccination Receipt Rate among Adolescent Boys in NYS

Human papillomavirus (HPV) infection and HPV-associated cancers constitute a significant public health concern at national and global levels. The CDC estimates that 79 million Americans are currently infected with HPV and 14 million people are newly infected each year. Although HPV vaccination has been provided for boys since 2011, the vaccination rate is very low among adolescent boys. In 2014, only 22% of boys aged 13–17 years had received all 3 doses in the series. In this regard, it is necessary to study the barriers and facilitators in increasing the uptake of the vaccine among adolescent boys. Using a system dynamics (SD) approach and the constructs of health belief model, the goal of this paper is to explore how psychosocial, demographic, socio-economic, and health system factors impact the initiation and completion of recommended series of HPV vaccination. The simulation model developed in this paper is capable of replicating the historical data, and has been used to investigate the influence of different interventions including the effect of parents’ adherence and providers’ recommendations on the vaccine uptake rate. The best intervention is increasing the provider’s recommendation since it raised this rate by 13%.