Single-Dose HPV Vaccine Impacts – Center for Health Decision Science

CHDS’s Emily Burger led a team, including Jane Kim, Stephen Sy, Mary Caroline Regan, and former postdoctoral fellow Jenny Spencer, as well as other collaborators, to examine the long-term health impacts of switching the HPV vaccination strategy in the United States from the existing multi-dose schedule to a single-dose vaccination schedule. Their work was published recently in the Lancet Regional Health – Americas.

The researchers used two simulation models of HPV transmission and cervical cancer to compare the current approach with several alternative single-dose scenarios, including cases where the vaccine was assumed to have lower efficacy or shorter-lasting protection, or both.

The study projected that both two-dose and one-dose vaccination programs could nearly eliminate HPV-16 infections and reduce cervical cancer cases by more than 90% by the end of the century. Even in scenarios where the vaccine had lower efficacy or protection decreased over time, cervical cancer incidence increased by fewer than 2 percentage points decades after switching to a single-dose schedule, and the projected timeline for cervical cancer elimination did not change. These findings suggest that switching to a single-dose HPV vaccination schedule could maintain reductions in cervical cancer incidence, even under pessimistic efficacy and durability assumptions.

This research aims to inform policy decisions in the United States and other countries considering a switch to a single-dose schedule.

Learn more: Read the full publication, Single-Dose HPV Vaccination in the United States – A Multi-Modeling Analysis