Women’s risk of dying from cervical cancer may be much greater than medical professionals originally thought, according to a new study.

HPV and Cancer

Ask your child's doctor at their next appointment about getting HPV vaccine. Take advantage of any visit to the doctor—such as an annual health checkup or physicals for sports, camp, or college—to ask the doctor about what shots your preteens and teens need.

Boys need HPV vaccine, too. Here's why...

A vaccine to protect against the most dangerous strains of human papillomavirus (HPV), which cause almost all cervical cancers, as well as many cases of other cancers and genital warts in both sexes, won the approval of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration nearly nine years ago. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now recommends that all boys and girls aged 11 or 12 receive the shots. Vaccination campaigns, aimed largely at girls and women, have fallen short of expectations. By 2013 just over half of U.S. females aged 13 to 17 had received at least one dose of either the Gardasil or Cervarix vaccine. For males, that figure was a disappointing 35 percent. Now head and neck cancers associated with the virus are on the rise, leading some experts to recommend that a gender-neutral or male-centric approach might be more effective...