Five mantras - Effective COVID-19 vaccine communication
As scientists move closer to an effective COVID-19 vaccine, the global health community is preparing for how it will build trust in its safety and efficacy. GAVI (The Vaccine Alliance) Civil Society Constituency recently convened a webinar on Keeping Trust in Immunisation: Community Perceptions of Vaccination in the time of COVID-19 to explore the communication groundwork required to ensure effective vaccine uptake. The webinar gave us an opportunity to share what could help instil trust and raise confidence in vaccines. [CI Editor's note: Click here for a summary of, and access to, this webinar.]
We have worked together in health communication at BBC Media Action for over 10 years - including normalising condom use during the height of the HIV and AIDS crisis in India, and making a drama as part of our Ebola response work in West Africa. Now, BBC Media Action is researching, producing and disseminating content on COVID-19 in more than 50 languages, reaching 60 million people around the world.
Well-designed communication can increase healthy behaviours, including vaccine uptake. Here are our top five mantras for how to think about COVID-19 vaccine communication.
Mantra #1: Get ahead of the challenge - we need to act now
The need of the hour is to get in front of this challenge - before a vaccine becomes available.
We've heard a lot of experts say things like, "let's wait for the vaccine to come out...we don't yet have funding for total access...we need to sort out the supply chain first..." and so on. Ensuring equitable access to the vaccine is a real challenge that deserves attention. But there is one important caveat: We can't wait. Taking a linear approach ignores the fact that people do not wait to think about what they want and need until the product is in front of them.
Comments
[TheCINet] Covid - Mantras
These - Five mantras - Effective COVID-19 vaccine communication - don't appear to be mantras as much as a marketing push for BBC media. I would have thought a mantra would be a simpler set of recommendations to mitigate the impact of a pandemic threat like Covid19. I prefer simple infection control measures and the need to maintain the urgency until the vaccine is widely dispersed and the population innoculated.
I have always thought that
I have always thought that messages are Nice and Needed, but Never Enough. However when we ask how useful they are, we do have to balance their heft (usually small, short-term and underfunded) against the counter-messages which are coming from the culture, society, friends and family and (as in some countries) from political or religious institutions and movements.
I have been looking at the blogs on food education: lots of them are promoting good diet, but not many are looking at what good diet is up against, these counter-influences which are so pervasive, continuous and relentless. I think all health education probably has to think in terms of defensive as well as promotional measures and build this double stance into projects, programs, curricula etc.
Jane Sherman, food education consultant
Depends on what messages are thrown at people as to what they do
If your comment to look at one of the "most sophisticated countries in the world where the virus is spreading like wildfire - throwing messages doesn't seem to have worked!" is about the USA then this comment is at odds with the reality of the messages. The developed countries which have had poor Covid outcomes are not as a result of 'throwing messages which have not worked' but rather leaders who have sent messages which have downplayed the seriousness of the threat, initially in the UK until Boris actually got Covid, and in the US where Trump has maliciously undermined prevention efforts though his "Covid-Covid-Covid" speeches. I do agree that the cultural context is important. However, building risk-perception toward a pandemic threat with audiences that in many cases may not see themselves as being at-risk is not "scaring the boots off them" but instead adressing the natural avoidance and dissonance that we find in many communities from pandemics. Comments like "its not us its the other village/community spreading this disease" are common in field research displaying the many other health and social problems these people deal with every day. We need to stress the seriousness of the threat in order to engage the audience and then build their confidence and skills to make protective changes, with whatever resources are available. If you examine the literature in regard to 'motivation' determinants you will find that 'anxiety' is significant predictor of change. This indicates that health threats need to be well defined in messages in order for people to take them seriously. The vulnerable are not as helpless as many make them out to be and they will act on things that are within their locus of control. So social distancing and wearing protective face masks are in this realm, even where water may be scarce.
Emphasize the importance of socio-cultural knowledge
Five mantras - Effective COVID-19 vaccine communication
While the BBC article may be light on specifics, it does well emphasize the importance of socio-cultural knowledge and application; this I consider an oft neglected element in the haste to implement (well-intentioned as they be) national responses. There are many minority languages, for example, in which words or broader expressions of the compexity of COVID-19 are difficult to explain, and then to follow up with the requisite prevention advisories.
An aspect that is missing in most advisories is the difficulty and--in many communities--the impossibility of following the rules and directives because of the living conditions. This has been demonstrted around the world and even i wealthy countries wherein indigenous and vrious religious groups cannot by virtue of their communal societies adhere to directives or advisories. Therefore there must be a priori improvements in planning for the eventuality of more such pandemics (wherever and wheneber they may occur).
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