Cervical cancer is one of the most common cancers afflicting women worldwide.The wide disparities in the incidence and mortality of cervical cancer are mainly attributable to irregular education and economic development in China. We assessed the knowledge of HPV and attitudes towards HPV vaccination among middle school students and their parents in Changzhi city of north China from June 2015 to March 2017, in order to provide an evidence for the development of an effective national HPV vaccination program.
We selected 6 middle schools from urban and rural area in Changzhi city of north China. 2 first-grade classes were randomly choose from each school as the intervention group (given education related to knowledge of cervical cancer and HPV vaccination), and other first-grade classes in the same schools as the control group. The health education was conducted by the qualified teacher for intervention group. The questionnaire related the knowledge on cervical cancer was conducted before and after class. The same test was performed in the control group. The two groups were followed up to evaluate the effect of education in 2016 and 2017,respectively. Their parents of the students were required to accept the education of cervical cancer and HPV vaccination, and complete the questionnaire before and after the lecture.
1241 students, aged from 11-15 years, from 6 middle schools attended the study in the baseline survey, 568 in intervention group and 673 in control group, respectively. We found only 34.89% of participates heard of cervical cancer, 10.87% heard of HPV, 7.17% heard of HPV vaccine. After intervention, there were a significantly improvement the awareness about cervical cancer and HPV vaccine (P<0.05). 91.02% of participates would like to HPV vaccine (P<0.01). There were a significant difference between intervention and control group (P<0.01). Comparing the follow-up results of survey in 2016 and 2017, we found there still were a significant with the awareness between intervention and control group (P<0.05). In the baseline, we found that 29.87% of 233 parents heard of the HPV, and 20.34% heard of the HPV vaccine in the survey. Also, there were a significantly improvement the awareness about cervical cancer and HPV vaccine (P<0.05) after the health education.
The level of knowledge on cervical cancer and HPV vaccine was lower in the subjects. We should strength public and middle schools students education with regard to cervical cancer and HPV vaccination to support increased uptake of cervical cancer prevention and control in China. Also it is necessary to shorten the interval between health educations in order to improve the effect of it.
* This study was supported by the Project HOPE—Health Opportunity for People Everywhere.