BOSTON– Natalie Joseph, MD, MPH, a pediatrician and adolescent medicine specialist at Boston Medical Center (BMC), has been named Massachusetts’ “HPV Vaccine Is Cancer Prevention Champion” for outstanding efforts to protect adolescents from cancers caused by HPV.
Led in partnership by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Association of American Cancer Institutes, and the American Cancer Society, the “HPV Vaccine Is Cancer Prevention Champion” Award Program recognizes clinicians, clinics, practices, groups, and health systems that are going above and beyond to foster HPV vaccination in their community.
Joseph, who is also a Clinical Associate Professor of Pediatrics at Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM), has spent more than a decade researching HPV vaccine initiation among low-income and minority women. She takes a bi-generational approach to support a diverse group of mothers and daughters, initiating the HPV vaccine series among daughters and improving awareness of and intent to get a pap smear among moms. She has an impressive HPV vaccination record: 83 percent of adolescent patients at BMC have completed their HPV vaccine series, above the national rate and the CDC’s Healthy People 2020 goal of 80 percent.
“Improving HPV vaccination awareness, especially among low-income communities and communities of color, is vital to helping all adolescents become healthy adults,” says Joseph. “I am honored to receive this award from the CDC, and hope my work will continue to educate providers and families about this life-saving vaccine.”
Every year, the award honors up to one champion from all 50 U.S. states, eight U.S. Territories and Freely Associated States, and the District of Columbia. Immunization programs submit nominations for the “HPV Vaccine is Cancer Prevention Champion” in their state or territory. Nominees must be a clinician, clinic, practice, group, or health system that treats adolescents as part of their overall patient population and must have an HPV vaccine series completion rate at 60% or higher for their adolescent patient population.
To read Natalie Joseph’s profile on the CDC’s website, and to learn more about “HPV Vaccine Is Cancer Prevention Champion” Award program, please visit https://www.cdc.gov/hpv.