Occupational HPV exposure and vaccination among healthcare workers: Implications for institutional vaccination strategies

Abstract

Healthcare workers may be exposed to HPV physically through occupational contact orwhile counseling patients with HPV conditions. Despite this exposure, HPV vaccinationuptake among healthcare workers remains suboptimal. The relative contributions ofdemographic, cognitive, and occupational factors to vaccination behavior, risk percep-tion, and vaccine advocacy in the context of institutional prevention strategies are notwell defined. Our aim is to identify independent predictors of HPV vaccine uptake,perceived occupational HPV risk, and willingness to recommend HPV vaccinationamong healthcare workers, with the goal of informing institutional vaccination strate-gies. This cross-sectional survey study included healthcare workers from different spe-cialties and evaluated HPV vaccine uptake, perceived occupational HPV risk, andwillingness to recommend vaccination. We used predictors such as age, sex, clinicalrole, HPV knowledge, misconceptions, and vaccine safety beliefs then analyzing usingmultivariable logistic regression. Among 318 healthcare workers, 41.6% reported priorHPV vaccination. The majority (53.8%) worked in Internal Medicine. Vaccine uptake wasstrongly associated with age; those aged 27–45 had higher odds than those >45 y (aOR7.03). Sex and HPV knowledge were not significant predictors. Perceived occupationalHPV risk was linked to specialty, with dermatology showing higher risk perception (aOR2.35), and inversely related to age (aOR 0.97 per year). Willingness to recommend HPVvaccination was high and driven mainly by confidence in vaccine safety (aOR 14.6). Thesefindings suggest targeted, role-specific strategies beyond education to inform institu-tional HPV vaccination strategies