Communicating to the Public about Vaccines and Using Digital Strategies to Promote Vaccine Uptake: Information for Planners and Implementers

"Governments worldwide are currently undertaking or planning the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines, and some are starting to review their progress and refine their communication efforts to promote vaccine uptake. Communication to the public is an important part of these and other vaccination strategies."

Designed for health systems planners and implementers, especially those in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), who are involved in developing vaccine communication strategies, these information leaflets are underpinned by systematic reviews from Cochrane and other sources. They were compiled by Cochrane Effective Practice and Organisation of Care (EPOC). They are relevant to the COVID-19 context but not exclusively focused on vaccination during this pandemic.

The leaflets include:

1. Vaccination Communication between Healthcare Workers and Older Adults: Implementation Considerations [3 pages, PDF] - provides prompts and questions for planners implementing strategies to improve vaccination communication between healthcare workers and older adults. (See Related Summaries, below, for the review on which this leaflet is based.) One of the issues implementers can explore in this leaflet is the potential tension between the public health goal of increasing vaccine uptake and the goal of supporting informing vaccination choices by individuals.
2. Communicating with the Public about Vaccines: Implementation Considerations [8 pages, PDF] - offers prompts and questions for planners implementing communication strategies for all groups, including parents, older adults, and healthcare workers, and is based on four systematic reviews of qualitative research. Prepared for the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)'s COVID-19 Global Evaluation Coalition, this leaflet encourages planners to consider a range of factors, including people's concerns and misconceptions about COVID-19 and the vaccine and the extent to which the information they are providing is transparent, timely, understandable, and accessible to hard-to-reach groups.
3. Effects of Digital Interventions for Promoting Vaccination Uptake [7 pages, PDF] - presents what is known about the effectiveness of digital strategies to promote vaccine uptake and summarises evidence from four systematic reviews on this topic. This leaflet provides advice to decision-makers and operational staff - e.g., pay attention to context: Health systems arrangements and on-the-ground realities and constraints may affect the acceptability and feasibility of digital interventions. For example, internet-based vaccination information may not be a feasible option in economically poorer settings. The leaflet illustrates that, despite digital strategies being used widely for vaccination communication, the evidence is fragmented and shows mixed results.