Why A Memphis Clinic Is Promoting HPV Vaccines This Fall
There’s a need for early vaccination, says pharmacist and clinical director Dr. Ted Lyons.
Significantly fewer people in the U.S. are getting infected from the human papillomavirus (HPV) since the HPV vaccine first rolled out 18 years ago. Fewer are developing genital warts, and there are also fewer cases of early cervical cancer.
Despite the vaccine’s effectiveness, there have been decreases in HPV vaccine uptake, especially in communities of color. This is likely due to both interruptions in routine health care delivery and increasing vaccine hesitancy across vaccine types.
To learn more about the ways health workers broach conversations with their communities about the importance of HPV vaccines, Public Good News spoke with Dr. Ted Lyons, PharmD, and owner of ShotRx Health and Wellness Solutions, a Memphis family clinic that opened as a COVID-19 vaccination clinic in 2021.
Lyons shared his lessons learned from combatting vaccination hesitancy in his communities and why he believes health workers can be doing more to raise awareness about HPV.
Here’s what he said.
PGN: What have you learned from combatting vaccination hesitancy in Memphis these last few years?
Dr. Ted Lyons: You have to be where the people are. It's easy—and we do it too often—to pontificate from on high what people should do: get your vaccinations, get your health checkups, get these things.
But when you're able to actually go and put boots on the ground in a church, in a community center, in a school, in a business that's there and answer people's questions and help them see why they need to do these things, then they actually get them done.
You'll never get 100 percent of people to do anything, but you get a lot more than the paltry numbers we see a lot of times in our communities of getting your prostate exam, getting your blood pressure checked, taking your medications, taking your vaccinations.
PGN: Can you share an example?
T.L: We always have the worst numbers in Black and Brown communities, and it's really because of a lack of trust, a lack of engagement, more than anything.
Engagement leads to trust. If I don't know you, if I don't see you, if you're not interacting with me, how can I trust you?
I'm a Christian minister. I don't mind sharing my faith. But I work across all faiths you know, and with those who are agnostic as well.
There's a Catholic church here in North Memphis, and the father who's there, he is from Africa. He has a mass that is in English and a mass that is in Spanish. And he called and asked, “Could you come to the second mass? No one's getting vaccinated. I really want you all to come and just vaccinate as many people as you can.”
And I said, “We'll come. We'll do it. But if you don't have a lot of people sign up, just let me talk to them for a while, and let's see what we can do.”
So we went. There were about 30 people who had signed up beforehand that wanted to be vaccinated.
He had about 200 people there at mass that day, so he had me come in and talk to them. And he and a couple other folks translating questions back and forth. We spent about 20 minutes talking about all the myths and everything else. After we finished the list of 30 changed. We ended up vaccinating 130-plus people at that second mass, all because of conversation and being able to answer people's questions.
PGN: Can you tell us more about your team’s priorities in promoting HPV vaccines in Memphis?
T.L.: Here in Memphis we have St. Jude. They’re known worldwide for treating children's cancers. Being a cancer research center, they have an HPV round table, because they understand how important it is to prevent HPV—the human papilloma virus which is a naturally occurring virus.
They're bringing me on to talk at the roundtable about ShotRx’s successes, and how we've been having conversations out in the community.
HPV is out there, and there are various strains of it. Nine of them are the most prevalent, and it exists in such a way that pretty much everybody in America comes in contact with HPV and naturally clears it from their body by the time they're 50.
However, there are a lot of times where it is not cleared and you never know about it. You never know about it until cervical cancer happens, until vulvar cancer happens, until mouth, throat or anal cancer happens.
If you receive the HPV vaccination series, it’s less likely that you'll get any of these types of cancer. It's all preventable.
So that's one of the things that we're doing. We're really stressing it for the children that we come in contact with, because if we can start with the children, then we're able to protect generations.
PGN: What has been your biggest challenge in raising awareness about the need for HPV vaccines?
T.L.: The biggest challenge comes from the people who can affect [vaccination uptake] the most. And that's health care professionals like myself, physicians, and nurse practitioners, folks who are able to have those conversations with parents, with patients. They are not always that great at having a conversation.
It's a touchy topic. It's, “Well, I offered it. They said, ‘No.’ I'm gonna move on.”
We have to be better as health professionals at having those conversations.
Let's talk a little bit more about it. Let's bring it back up at the next pediatrician's visit. Even when mom and dad say, “You know, I told you no last year…”
Yeah but it's so important that I want to make sure I offer it to you every time.
PGN: What else should community health workers know?
T.L: Amongst the Latino community, one of the big things surrounding HPV is cervical cancer in Latinas.
So that's huge. If health care workers would focus on HPV vaccination, we would see a lot fewer of those cancers in women altogether. So definitely in the Latino community, there's a large need for HPV vaccination early.
And the same for the African American community, we need to see those HPV vaccinations go up. Because everyone is exposed to HPV, you know, and it affects us, seemingly more negatively than others.
That's not necessarily been hashed all the way out yet. But what we do know is, if you're vaccinated, it is less likely that you experience any of those cancers that may result from HPV. And again, it ranges from everything from cervical cancer, vaginal cancer, penile cancer, mouth and throat cancer. When you have something that's preventable. Why not prevent it?
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This article first appeared on Public Good News and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.