News Archive

While the vaccine to prevent human papillomavirus (HPV) and related cancers has been approved for use in the United States since 2006, the national vaccination rate has ticked up slowly over time to 65.5 percent as of 2017.

In the U.S., state laws and policies regarding the HPV vaccine vary greatly, as do vaccination rates. IU McKinney Assistant Visiting Professor Aila Hoss and colleagues undertook an analysis of the nation’s HPV vaccine statutes and regulations for a new article in the journal Human Vaccines & Immunotherapeutics. The article is published as part of the journal’s special issue on HPV vaccination.

Professor Hoss was asked to work on the project because of her experience designing and conducting legal epidemiology studies, which are scientific studies that compare law as a factor in health outcomes. To the best of her knowledge, this is the first study of state HPV vaccination requirements that derived data using legal epidemiological methods across statutes and regulations on a breadth of topical areas including mandates, education, scope of practice, and financing.

According to Professor Hoss, the need for a comprehensive description of state law across all subject areas from school requirements, to vaccine access, to funding would help advance analyses of policy impact on HPV vaccination uptake.

Professor Hoss is an IU Grand Challenge Fellow, and her research explores topics in public health law, health policy development, and the impact of federal Indian law and Tribal law on health outcomes. Prior to joining the faculty at IU, Aila served as a staff attorney for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Public Health Law Program (PHLP), where she worked to improve public health through the development of legal tools and the provision of legal technical assistance to state, Tribal, local, and territorial governments.