How Should We Respond to Vaccine-hesitant Parents? :

Vaccine hesitancy leads to suboptimal HPV vaccination rates. How we should respond to address parents’ concerns depends on our understanding of their concerns.  The best way to get a handle on HPV vaccine hesitancy is to listen in on actual visits and hear how the discussions between parents, teens and pediatricians go. That is exactly what Shay et al. (10.1542/peds.2017-2312) have done in a study being early released in our journal.  The authors audio recorded more than 40 visits with parents hesitant to have their teen receive the HPV vaccine in six Dallas pediatric clinics and listened to the responses of the providers who saw these patients to see if their responses were persistent to administer the vaccine, acquiescent to their concerns, or a mix of both.  The results are extremely interesting and show that when parents had questions or concerns, their teen was likely to still receive an HPV vaccine the same day but when parents were assertive, only a third of teens got vaccinated on the same day.  In addition, when providers stayed firm and persistent in their belief that the HPV was in the best interest of the teen despite the parent’s assertiveness, questions, or concerns, they were most successful in getting their patients vaccinated.  We don’t want to be overly assertive about why you should read this study to help develop the right response to encourage vaccination in hesitant families, but at least we hope you’ll acquiesce and read the results and discussion to consider what strategy you are using or perhaps need to change for the next family you encounter who is vaccine hesitant.