Cervical Cancer Prevention: A U.S. Success Story

Roughly 75 percent of U.S. teens aged 13 to 17 had received at least one dose of a vaccine immunizing them against the human papillomavirus in 2022, the root cause of cervical cancer. While other cancer variants are more prevalent in the media and in terms of cases and mortality rates, it is still the fourth most common type of cancer in women, with 660,000 females worldwide having developed the disease in 2022, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). It is also one of the few cancers that is completely preventable by two to three vaccine doses early in life. Our chart based on data from the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases (NCIRD) shows that uptake has been considerably slower for teenage boys.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) started recommending the HPV vaccine, which protects against the nine most important of the around 200 types of human papillomavirus, in 2006. However, by 2010, only 1.4 percent of boys aged 13 to 17 had had at least one vaccine shot, while around 50 percent of girls in the same age group received at least one dose. This changed rapidly over the next five years, with teenage boys showing an estimated rate of 50 percent in 2015. By 2020, the share of recipients of one dose of the HPV vaccine rose above 70 percent for both sexes.

While mortality due to cervical cancer is low in more industrialized nations, low- and middle-income countries bear the brunt of deaths attributed to this type of cancer. As the WHO reports, 94 percent of the 350,000 cervical-cancer-related deaths in 2022 were recorded in these country groups. This cancer type is considered even more dangerous when combined with an HIV infection.