Healthcare workers (HCWs) play a key role in the recommendation of HPV vaccination. Our study aimed to understand to what extent a structured health intervention could change the knowledge and atti...
29 July 2021 in Human Vaccines & Immunotherapeutics
The objective of this study was to investigate the parent cognition of information regarding the human papillomavirus (HPV) and their willingness toward HPV vaccination of their middle-school-aged children in Zunyi, Guizhou Province, China.The results provide a basis for improving the awareness concerning HPV-related information as a key vaccination strategy for implementing the HPV vaccine in the local context. Methods include the random cluster sampling method and questionnaires to survey parents. General descriptive and single-factor analyses were used to assess cognition to determine factors influencing vaccine willingness. Of 1,074 parents, 28.2% (302) and 38.0% (408) had heard of HPV and its vaccine before the survey, and when given HPV-related information, 73.9% (794) parents were willing to vaccinate their children. Reasons why parents did or did not want the vaccination were surveyed, with lack of sufficient knowledge about HPV and its vaccine being the primary reason to refuse vaccination. Concerns about safety, effectiveness, and perceiving low risk are the biggest obstacle in promoting vaccination. When the price is <1000, most parents (56.1%) are willing to vaccinate their children; thus, cost is also one of the concerns. Therefore, strategies for improving public awareness regarding the risk of cervical cancer and confidence in vaccination must be considered by policymakers.If the national authority confirms that the vaccine is safe and effective, the vaccine should be included in the national immunization program to increase publicity, address safety concerns, and allow for price regulation.
14 September 2021 in Human Vaccines & Immunotherapeutics
In mainland China, HPV vaccines have been available to the public. However, only a few related studies among health care providers, as the key information providers, were reported although public c...
Cumulative evidence has demonstrated that exposure to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) or phthalates (PAEs) contributes to a variety of adverse health effects. However, the association of PAHs and PAEs co-exposure with blood cell-based inflammatory indicators during early pregnancy is still unclear. We aimed to investigate the single and mixed associations of exposure to PAHs and PAEs with blood cell-based inflammatory indicators among early pregnant women. A total of 318 early pregnant women were included in this study. General linear regressions were used to estimate the relationships of individual OH-PAHs and mPAEs with blood cell-based inflammatory indicators. The key pollutants were selected by an adapted least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) penalized regression model and wasemployed to build the Bayesian kernel machine regression (BKMR) and quantile g-computation (Q-g) models, which can assess the joint association of OH-PAHs and mPAEs with blood cell-based inflammatory indicators. General linear regression indicated that each 1% increase in MOP was associated with a 4.92% (95% CI: 2.12%, 7.68%), 3.25% (95% CI: 0.50%, 6.18%), 5.87% (95% CI: 2.22%, 9.64%), and 6.50% (95% CI: 3.46%, 9.64%) increase in WBC, lymphocytes, neutrophils, and monocytes, respectively. BKMR and Q-g analysis showed that the mixture of OH-PAHs and mPAEs was linked with increased levels of white blood cells (WBC), neutrophils, monocytes, and lymphocytes, and MOP was identified as the dominant contributor. OH-PAHs and mPAEs co-exposure in early pregnancy was associated with elevated blood cell-based inflammatory indicators reactions. More attention should be paid to the inflammation induced by environmental pollution for perinatal women, especially early pregnant women.
Information on healthcare costs in low-and-middle-income countries is limited. This study presents a framework to perform healthcare cost estimates for each province in China. This study has two aims. Using cervical cancer as an example, the first aim is to use data (including micro-costing data) from one province to derive estimates for other provinces in China. This used provincial and national Chinese-language statistical reports and considered levels of service delivery, hospital-seeking behaviour, and the urban/rural population distribution. The second aim is to characterise the relationship between the reference costs estimated using the method mentioned above and two sets of cost estimates derived using simplified cost-scaling method with per capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP), and the Human Development Index (HDI). For simplified methods, regression modelling characterised the relationship between province-specific healthcare costs and macro-economic indicators, then we used the exponential fit to extrapolate costs. Using the reference method, the estimated costs were found to vary substantially by urban/rural regions and between provinces; the ratios of highest to lowest provincial costs were 3.5 for visual inspection with acetic acid (VIA), 4.4 for cold knife conisation (CKC) and 4.6 for stage II cancer treatment. The HDI-based scaling method generally resulted in a better fit to reference costs than the GDP method. These reference costs for cervical cancer can inform cost-effectiveness evaluation of cervical screening and HPV vaccination in China. HDI-based methods for cost-scaling-based on social, as well as purely economic, factors-have potential to provide more accurate estimates.
22 May 2026 in International Journal of Hygiene and Environmental Health