Men Weren’t Interested in Getting HPV Vaccine if it Would Help Women
Posted on Wednesday, June 10th, 2009 and is filed under Health. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
An HPV vaccine for men didn’t increase their interest in getting the shot if it were to protect women from getting cervical cancer from HPV according to a new study from Florida State University (FSU).
“You can probably interpret this finding in a number of ways,” said Mary Gerend, assistant professor of medical humanities and social sciences at the FSU College of Medicine. “Thinking about the benefit to their own health — protection again rare genital cancers and genital warts — is all men really need to know; telling them all that extra stuff really isn’t going to push them one way or another.”
An HPV vaccine has been available for women and girls since 2006.
356 men were assessed in the study, and were asked to rate the likelihood that they would get the vaccine on a scale from one to six, with one being “very unlikely” and six being “very likely.” The results were that they expressed only moderate interest in getting the vaccine, even men who were in committed relationships.
“Now, we have to remember that these were 18-, 19-, 20-year-old male college students, so we have to keep that in mind when considering their idea of a committed relationship,” Gerend said. “And if we did this study again, I’d really want to make sure we drilled home the message of the seriousness of HPV for women. I think they got that message, but it might not have been strong enough.”
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