Challenges and opportunities for U.S. family planning clinics in providing the HPV vaccine.

Like a modern-day Icarus the newly introduced HPV vaccine in the United States soared high with the promise of preventing cervical cancer but crashed back to earth as efforts to require it as a condition for girls attendance of middle-school ignited a firestorm of controversy. With that fall the focus of public health and vaccine advocates is necessarily shifting from advocacy around school mandates to finding more targeted ways of getting the vaccine to girls and young women as well as information about the vaccines importance and benefits to parents and the public. This shift has moved the nations clinic-based family planning service providers much closer to center stage in the vaccine introduction effort. Family planning clinics constitute a major source of health care information and services to low-income and minority women precisely those women who are at highest risk for cervical cancer. Recasting family planning providers as sources of vaccine-related information and services posesmyriad challenges but if these challenges can be met family planning clinics are uniquely positioned to play a central role in reducing long-standing disparities in cervical cancer incidence and deaths in the United States. (excerpt)