UAB Launches mHealth Study to Boost Vaccine Acceptance Among Teens
UAB is launching a study aimed at using mHealth messaging to improve the vaccination rate in Alabama, where only one in five adolescents has received an HPV vaccine.
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By - Researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham are launching a study to determine if mHealth messaging can improve vaccination rates among rural adolescents.
The program, funded by a $300,000 grant from Merck, Sharp and Dohme, will focus on improving Alabama’s human papillomavirus vaccine rate, which stands at 20 percent and is as low as 9 percent in some rural areas (the national average is about 50 percent). But it could provide the framework for connected health programs addressing a wide variety of public health issues and vaccines, including one for COVID-19.
“Reducing vaccine hesitancy in the rural Deep South is a high-priority public health target,” Henna Budhwani, PhD, a medical sociologist and assistant professor at the UAB School of Public Health, said in a press release. “Focusing on increasing HPV vaccine awareness and understanding the causes of COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy are urgently warranted, due to low rates of HPV vaccine that lead to high rates of preventable cancers, and high rates of COVID-19 that disproportionately affect African American populations.”
