There is no time like the present to raise awareness about Medical Ethics! Junior Achievement, the world’s largest organization dedicated to educating students about workforce readiness, entrepreneurship and financial literacy will be taking on Business Ethics in Healthcare with their Inaugural Ethics in Healthcare Luncheon at a local college in their Upstate South Carolina chapter next week.
This event is sure to stir up some healthy discussion on the principals upheld in the healthcare industry by connecting education with the real world!
Part of the Ethics Lunch program will be an essay contest opened to all high school students in the area. Students will have written essays about the HPV vaccine, organ transplants, and stem cell engineering. Throughout the program community professionals in the field of public health will be facilitating roundtable discussions about each of these topics with students.
I will have the incredible opportunity to facilitate a roundtable dialogue with students about…. the HPV vaccine! With the abundance of research and public opinion that has recently surfaced around this, I couldn’t be more excited to talk to students and hear their thoughts on a HPV vaccination mandate, and what they have learned about the vaccine so far. In my mind I am anticipating an ebb and flow of gender misconceptions, media, sex education or a lack thereof and of course ethics.
In a previous blog about HPV Compliance Rates written by Tell Them Research Assistant, Cherrise Eatmon, I learned that “the most recent legislative action in the state of South Carolina was the 2007 “Cervical Cancer Prevention Act” (H.B. 3136) which would require that young girls get the HPV vaccine before entering the sixth grade or after their 11th birthday. This piece of legislation was tabled in April of 2007. There has been no further legislative action for continuing education, increasing access or additional funding for the HPV vaccine in South Carolina.”
It is my hope that we will do more than scratch the surface, and really get into what this vaccine means for ALL of our young people. In a recent article from Trish Hutchinson, Co-Founder of Girology, we know that the HPV Vaccine, also called Guardasil, “has been recommended by the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices” and more specifically that “it is recommended for boys aged 11 to 12 years, just as it is recommended for girls.”
Thank you in advance to Junior Achievement for providing this amazing chance for students and community members to learn more about healthcare ethics by jumping into some of what we could consider “hot button” topics in healthcare!
What has your community done to raise awareness about the HPV Vaccine?
Sources:
Girlology: HPV Vaccine is for Girls AND Boys by Trish Hutchinson
http://www.girlology.com/our-blog/discussion/girlologists-gab/hpv-vaccine-is-for-girls-and-boys
Tell Them: Low Compliance Rates receiving the HPV Vaccine by Cherisse Eatmon
http://blog.tellthemsc.org/author/cherisse-eatmon/