Important Announcements

Nondiscrimination Policy Update

Boston Medical Center Health System complies with applicable Federal civil rights laws and does not discriminate on the basis of age, race, color, national origin (including limited English proficiency and primary language), religion, culture, physical or mental disabilities, socioeconomic status, sex, sexual orientation and gender identity and/or expression. BMCHS provides free aids and services to people with disabilities and free language services to people whose primary language is not English.

To read our full Nondiscrimination Statement, click here.

Adolescent Research

Our research focuses on HPV vaccine initiation among low-income and minority groups in public healthcare settings. Our work to address racial/ethnic disparities in HPV vaccination rates in children and adolescents and in cervical cancer screenings in adult women has made us  a world leader in HPV-related cancer prevention among minority communities. Presently we have two HPV vaccine studies funded by Merck MISP.

See all of our Pediatric Research programs.

Contact

PI: Natalie Pierre Joseph, MD, MPH: napierre@bu.edu

Project Manager: Johane Seide: Johane.seide@bmc.org

Investigators

Department of Pediatrics 

General Clinical Research Unit (GCRU)

  • Ridiane Denis, MD, RN

Research projects

  • 2022-2028 Sponsor: Merck grant MISP # 61418 An exploratory open-label clinical trial evaluating the immunogenicity and safety of the 9vHPV 2-dose vaccine regimen in children aged 4–8 years.  
  • 2020-2024 Sponsor: Merck grant MISP #59402 An Open-Label Clinical Trial Evaluating the Immunogenicity of the 9vHPV Vaccination Regimen over 6 months Among Women Aged 16 to 45 years old, An Exploratory Immunogenicity Study ; NCT04206813
  • 07/01/2022 – 06/30/2027 Conversational Agents to Improve HPV Vaccine Acceptance in Primary Care, Funder: NIH, R01 CA273208-01.
    Major Goals: In this project we will adapt the Embodied Conversational Agent (ECA) technology to produce English and Spanish smartphone ECAs for HPV vaccination (ECA-HPV) to provide vaccine recommendations and motivational interviewing to parents/guardians and vaccine-eligible adolescents and facilitate communication with clinic staff. We will evaluate ECA-HPV in a randomized controlled trial for HPV-vaccine eligible adolescents aged 9-12 to evaluate ECA-HPV, comparing usual care versus usual care plus four design variants of the ECA-HPV.
  • 04/23/2021 – 01/31/2025 Community-based design and evaluation of a Conversational Agent to Promote SARS-COV2 Vaccination in Black Churches. Funder: NIH, R01 MD016882
    Major Goals: We will collaborate with the Black Ministerial Alliance TenPoint (BMATP) of Greater Boston to develop a smartphone-based Embodied Conversational Agent app that provides education about SARS-CoV-2 and influenza vaccination, and motivates vaccination completion, following public health guidelines. We will evaluate the intervention in a clinical trial involving 600 congregants from 12 predominately African American churches.