Parental Decision Making in the Context of New Medical Technologies: The HPV Vaccine and its Potential Challenges

该项目由《科学与社会》资助，研究美国人在新医疗技术背景下如何体验和解读风险。人乳头瘤病毒（HPV）疫苗是第一个预防一种完全通过性传播的病毒的疫苗，这种病毒被认为是宫颈癌的已知原因。这项研究将探讨疫苗及其相关干预措施如何以及是否会改变美国妇女对自己和女儿的风险认知。人乳头瘤病毒疫苗标志着妇女健康的重大转变。与大多数预防宫颈癌的妇科护理方法不同，疫苗的目标人群要年轻得多。拟议的研究试图解决健康干预方法通常假设但不明确的问题。该疫苗可能很快就会加入学校入学所需疫苗的行列，在许多方面，它作为强制性儿童疫苗系列的一部分的作用并不引人注目。疫苗作为一种新颖的、激进的预防可能性，与其作为“另一种疫苗”的潜在作用之间的紧张关系，可能会引起家长、政策制定者和医疗保健提供者的不确定性。通过民族志方法，该项目将挑战公共卫生风险概念。与许多长期存在的行为理论相结合，该项目询问性和生殖健康“风险”对女性可能意味着什么，什么算是健康行为，以及人们如何定义日常生活中的风险。在加州洛杉矶为期一年的时间里，PI将进行档案研究、人种学访谈和参与者观察，以追踪新技术在美国生活特定领域的影响。

This project, funded by Science and Society, considers how individuals in the United States experience and interpret risk in the context of a new medical technology. The Human Papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine is the first vaccine that prevents a solely sexually-transmitted virus, considered a known cause of cervical cancer. The research will explore how and if the vaccine and its related interventions alter perceptions of risk among American women for themselves and their daughters. The HPV vaccine marks a critical shift in the health of women.Unlike most cervical cancer preventive methods of gynecological care, the vaccine targets a much younger population. The proposed research seeks to engage with questions that health intervention methods often assume, yet do not make explicit. The vaccine may soon join the ranks of required school-entry vaccines, in many ways unremarkable in its role as part of the mandated childhood vaccine series. The tension between the vaccine as novel and radical preventive possibility and its potential role as ''just another vaccine'' may evoke uncertainty for parents, policymakers, and healthcare providers.Through ethnographic methods, this project will challenge public health concepts of risk. Engaging with many of the long-standing behavioral theories, this project asks what sexual and reproductive health ''risk'' might mean for women, what counts as a health behavior, and how people define risk in their everyday lives. Over a one-year period in Los Angeles, CA, the PI will conduct archival research, ethnographic interviews, and participant observations in order to trace the effects of new technology as it moves through specific spheres of American life.