Merck targets univ. females in HPV vaccine campaign

College Park, MD

Junior physiology and neurobiology major Jamie Lee is on the fence.

She is trying to decide whether to receive the Gardasil vaccine, a drug released in 2006 that helps prevent certain types of cervical cancer and genital warts.

"I'm hesitant to take anything that hasn't been on the market very long," Lee said. "There hasn't been enough research on it."

But Merck, the company that makes Gardasil, wants to change her mind. This fall, the company launched an informational campaign about HPV, the virus that can cause cervical cancer, to encourage college-age women to talk with their doctors about the virus, Merck spokeswoman Darby Stern said in an e-mail. The HPV facts campaign is targeting 50 universities across the country.

Alli Matson, sexual health education programs coordinator for the University Health Center, said the campaign began in October with the launch of www.HPV.com, an informational website created by Merck. The program is set to continue through the end of the fall semester, Stern said in an e-mail. At the university, Merck is spreading information through coffee sleeves, brochures and fliers about how women can protect themselves against HPV.

"The HPV Facts campaign is part of our ongoing efforts to provide important disease information to young women so that they can talk to their doctors about how to help protect themselves against HPV," Stern wrote.

Gardasil became available at the university just months after its June 2006 release, Matson said. The three-shot series costs $150 per shot at the health center.

The shot was increasingly popular in its first year of availability, said Tina Thorburn, nursing supervisor at the health center. Thorburn didn't have access to exact numbers because the health center is updating its computer system, but she estimated there were as many as 200 students who have been vaccinated.

"When Merck was doing all the advertising on television, we got a huge amount of girls coming in for [Gardasil]," she said. continued

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