A South Boston Community Health Center pediatrician has been nationally recognized for helping to protect teens from HPV-related cancers, with an astounding 70% vaccination completion rate against the disease that impacts tens of thousands a year.
“It’s definitely a great external validation about internally working so hard to keep championing for HPV vaccination,” said Dr. Thomas Schuch, who was given the HPV Vaccine Is Cancer Prevention Champion Award, which recognizes clinicians and health systems that go above and beyond to foster HPV vaccination in their community.
Nearly 79 million people are currently infected with HPV in the United States; each year, nearly 35,000 women and men are diagnosed with a cancer caused by HPV.
“Cancer sucks, so the data is out there that the earlier we vaccinate, the stronger the immune response to the vaccine. We are going to do the best for our patients by helping them not get cancer later in life,” said Schuch, who has been working at SBCHC since 2008.
Schuch, a Jamaica Plain resident, programmed customizations to electronic health records at his clinic to study trends in vaccine uptake, as well as to create support tools to help providers improve childhood and teen vaccine completion rates.
“This should be the power of why we are using electronic health records,” said Schuch. “I’ve been feeling really satisfied that this thing I helped change in the EHR has been keeping our momentum going.”
HPV vaccination could prevent more than 90% of these cancers from ever developing and should be given to boys and girls when they are 11 or 12 years old.
Schuch also built an automated advisory program that flags boys and girls at age 9 to encourage providers to initiate the vaccine early.
Schuch, who grew up in Indianapolis and came to Boston for medical school, said each month for the past two years, the health center has seen steady increases in vaccination rates, a trend he wants to continue to push forward and help spread to other local practices.
The award, led in partnership by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Association of American Cancer Institutes and the American Cancer Society, honors up to one champion from all 50 states.
Nominees must be a clinician, clinic, practice, group, or health system that treats teens as part of their overall patient population and must have an HPV vaccine series completion rate at 60% or higher.
