2016 AMREP Public Health Research Early-Career Researcher Best Paper Award

Public Health Category

Paper: Human papillomavirus in young women with Chlamydia trachomatis infection 7 years after the Australian human papillomavirus vaccination programme: a cross-sectional study

Journal: The Lancet Infectious Diseases [IF: 22.433]

Summary: Australia is the first country to implement the national human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination programme (covers types 6/11/16/18) for females and we have previously described dramatic falls in genital warts (types 6/11). But until I published this paper, there was no data on what was happening to the other two HPV types (16/18) covered in the vaccine. HPV 16/18 are very important because they are types that cause most cases of cervical cancer. The study looked over 10 years; 3 years before and 7 years after the HPV vaccination programme. For the first time we showed a near elimination of all vaccine preventable types (6/11/16/18) in young Australian women aged ≤25. This means that at current levels of vaccination (~73%) are sufficient for the almost complete eradication of the four vaccine-preventable types from the Australian population which means the HPV vaccine will result in dramatic falls in genital cancer in women.