COMMENTARY: Stories that move the needle
March 10, 2025 | By Matthew DuganBack in the cold, dark days of early January, I started making some inquiries of friends and acquaintances: Would you be a storyteller in support of a local, school-based HPV vaccination clinic?
As you can imagine, this prompted a variety of responses. Some people were quite knowledgeable about HPV as a contributor to several kinds of cancer. Others wondered how, without any direct HPV experience, they could help (after all, the vaccine was introduced in 2006 and so those of us of a certain age have never had it). The biggest question, though, was, “I don’t have a story about vaccines.”
To which I answered, “I promise you do.”
I work for an organization based at the University of Vermont’s Larner College of Medicine. The academic research world seems to love long titles that we can turn into long acronyms, so here you go: We’re the Northern New England Clinical Translational Research Network (NNE-CTR) and we’re charged with improving the health of northern New Englanders. This HPV vaccine project is one of many we’re involved with that have ranged from cancer research to local food, gun safety to indoor air pollution, lung cancer screening to much more.
In an era where even everyday issues can become political, our vaccination storytelling project is an effort to steer clear of the numbers, facts, and statistics that often do bloody battle with belief systems. Our approach is a very old one that’s suddenly new: To have people simply tell their stories from the heart.
To these storytellers who stepped up, I offer a humble thank you. You’re my heroes, and it would have been easy to say no. As you’ll read in their stories below, the HPV vaccine prevents six types of cancer, which means that with every shot delivered, these people have helped ensure a safer, healthier future for our community’s kids.
On my organization’s thank-you list as well are School Nurses Allison Conyers and Mary Newton and Superintendent Mike Leichliter of the Harwood Unified Union School District, who have been wonderful champions of this clinic from day one. And finally, we Vermonters can be proud of our Department of Health. These amazingly on-the-ball people think of literally everything in planning a safe, stress-free clinic experience for kids. We are unique in our region – even the nation – in that our Department of Health is a robust organization that is integrated into our communities on a local level. They do quiet, essential work keeping us healthy in ways we’re usually not even aware of.
But enough of my story. Below are some vaccination stories from your neighbors, including some from people who once thought they didn’t even have a story to tell.
Important details: The vaccine clinic for youth ages 9-18 will be held Wednesday, March 12, from 4 to 6 p.m. The location has now been moved to the Harwood Union Middle/High School gym due to the flooding at Crossett Brook Middle School where it was initially scheduled. Sign up online here by 4 p.m. Monday, March 10. The district plans another clinic in May.
Al Price: ‘In a year, they made a safe and reliable vaccine’
I'll never forget the sirens. There was a hospital up the street from where I lived in Brooklyn, NY, and in 2020, sirens wailed day and night as they brought in the victims of COVID-19, a disease that was killing 1000 people a day in New York City alone – my neighbors. I'm a scientist working on vaccines against developing-world diseases like HIV and tuberculosis, and so I saw firsthand how so many colleagues in my field pivoted to tackle Covid. They worked around the clock for months on end, and then, early in 2021, I turned on the news and saw video of the first people to receive the new Covid vaccine. I’ll never forget one woman who got her shot with tears of joy and relief streaming down her face. I cried too. My friends had done it. In a year they made a safe and reliable vaccine that is estimated to have saved over 14 million lives in the U.S. alone.
So, you could say I feel pretty strongly about the power of vaccines.
On March 12, the Harwood school district is hosting an HPV vaccine clinic for youth between 9 and 18 years old. This vaccine saves lives by preventing six kinds of cancer, including 99% of cervical cancers. Unlike 2020, this time my neighbors can get the shot before the disease, and that feels good. Signing up your kid is simple.
Heidi Hales: ‘polio made her world smaller’
Back in the 1970s, my grandmother would take me to visit my great aunt Gitton (that's a Swedish name). She lived in public housing because it was the only place in town that was accessible for someone in a wheelchair. I never knew her when she could stand, but my mom told me she was tall, and I remember her as quite beautiful and kind. My aunt was a young mother when she contracted polio, and while she didn't let her disability dominate her life, I remember thinking that polio had made her world smaller, and I remember learning as a young child how devastating diseases can be.
Cancer can also be life-changing, but, like polio, there's now a vaccine, at least for some forms of it. The human papillomavirus can cause six different types of cancer and the HPV vaccine can prevent all of them. I applaud the school district and the Vermont Department of Health for hosting their HPV vaccine clinic on March 12 for youth 9-18. In these challenging times when even vaccines find themselves the center of controversy, it's great to see this effort to ensure a healthy future for our community's youth. Parents and caregivers can go here for more information and to sign up.
Kristin Wolf: Flashback to COVID times
Friends, I just had a flashback to waiting in a long line in the Montpelier gym for the coveted Covid vaccine - mask on, squirming young children, anxiously watching the clock to make sure we'd get home for the endless barrage of remote learning and zoom meetings. Covid times.
Contrast that with the button I just clicked to sign my kid up for the HPV vaccine that will protect him, this time from cancer. I feel very fortunate that our school district is taking the lead on this effective (>98%) and often overlooked (~50% VT vaxx rate) vaccine and making it remarkably convenient and free for parents. Highly recommend, and thank you CBMS.
John Malter: ‘a vaccine for polio felt like a miracle’
A long time ago when I was seven, kids who contracted polio wound up crippled, confined to an iron lung, or worse. My mother knew people who had the disease, and she wanted to do everything in her power to protect her only child from this scourge. I lived in Suffolk County, New York, one of the counties in the United States with the highest incidence of polio. My mother signed the permission slip and as result of the vaccine I became a Polio Pioneer. And now at age 77, I look back on her decision and am forever grateful that my journey through life has not been disrupted by polio.
To all of us back then, a vaccine for polio felt like a miracle, and today the fact that there's a cancer-preventing vaccine feels like a miracle, too. Six types of cancer are caused by the HPV virus, including 99% of cervical cancers. Fortunately, getting the shot is easy: On March 12, kids over age nine can receive the vaccination for free now at Harwood Union Middle/High School and all they need is the same kind of permission slip my mom signed for me. Find more information and sign up online here.
Matt Dugan: ‘All it takes is a shot in the arm’
I was two when my grandmother died. All my life, my mom told me both what a special woman she was and that she had taken a particular shine to me as a baby. I’m 61 now and it’s still a bit sad thinking that someone out there loved you and you never got the chance to love them back. There’s no vaccine yet for her cancer, but there is one for six other types of cancer – including cervical cancer – that are all caused by the HPV virus.
On March 12 now at Harwood Union Middle/High School there’ll be a free clinic for children 18 and under to get immunized for HPV. When I think about my grandmother and our lost opportunities for love and laughs, I feel a bit better knowing that, today, some cancers are preventable and all it takes is a shot in the arm. Because of this miracle vaccine and clinics like this, our community’s kids will have the chance to grow up free from HPV-related cancers and one day maybe become grandmothers and grandfathers themselves. Signing up is easy.
Chris Finley: Memories of cancer patients
If you had the chance to protect your child from painful and disfiguring cancer, would you?
Early in my nursing career, I worked on a head and neck surgical cancer floor. The memories of caring for the brave patients (mostly men) who could no longer speak and had become badly disfigured from surgery has never left me. At that time, smoking was the leading cause of these cancers.
In the intervening years, the cause of these cancers has changed, and the human papilloma virus (HPV) has now been identified as the primary cause of the uptick throat cancers. An estimated 70% of these cancers in men are now known to be caused by HPV.
Protecting our kids from head and neck (including throat) cancer as well as five other HPV-related cancers is as simple as getting the shot. The Harwood Union School District is hosting a free HPV vaccination clinic for youth 9-18 on March 12 now moved to Harwood due to last week’s flooding at Crossett Brook Middle School. For more information go to this online signup.
Matthew Dugan is with the Northern New England Clinical Translational Research Network.