An OB/GYN’s case for vaccines

Since I completed my OB/GYN physician residency training in 2017, the kinds of concerns my patients bring to me have changed in ways that are hard to miss.

One noticeable change is the decline in patients coming in with abnormal Pap results, an essential way we screen for cervical cancer. While this is just my own experience, it matches what we’re seeing across the country.

One of the most powerful tools we have to prevent cervical cancer is the human papilloma virus (HPV) vaccine. In the United States the Gardasil 9 vaccine is the most commonly used version. The vaccine protects against the strains of HPV that cause the vast majority of cervical cancers as well as many anal, vulvar, vaginal, penile, and throat cancers.

The vaccine works best when the series is started early (around ages 11 or 12) but in 2018, the FDA expanded its approval to include adults up to age 45, showing that it can still provide protection well beyond the teenage years.

As a physician who cares for people’s sexual and reproductive health across the life span, I can’t overstate how much public health and individual patients stand to lose when vaccines become political targets.

The benefit of the HPV vaccine is clear. As more young people are vaccinated, far fewer are ending up on the path that leads to cervical cancer.

The gardasil vaccine was approved in 2006 by the FDA. Of women screened from ages 20-24 years old the incidence of cervical precancer fell by roughly 80% between 2008 and 2022. Among women aged 25—29 (one of the first groups to be offered the HPV vaccine) recent data shows that the rate of cervical cancer in this age group has dropped by nearly half since vaccination began.

These declines are exactly what we would expect to see if a vaccine that prevents the causative virus is doing the job. Simply put, this vaccine is saving lives by preventing cancers.

At the national level, the increasingly hostile stance some federal leaders have taken toward vaccine requirements alarms me as a physician. I fear the HPV vaccine could soon face the same politicization as other vaccines, and with it, the significant progress we’ve made in reducing cervical cancer could be undone.

We’ve already seen federal leaders undermine routine recommendations for the COVID‑19 vaccine in healthy children and pregnant women. Recently the CDC panel rolled back the universal birth dose of Hepatitis B, leaving many infants potentially unprotected.

The idea that we could move backward, allowing preventable illness to resurface simply because proven public-health tools were politicized, should be deeply concerning to all of us.

Dr. Jennifer Schuchmann is a native Iowan and an Ob/GYN physician practicing in Des Moines.