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Effective COVID-19 vaccine communication - Five mantras

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(Ed - please note that the full blog - Five mantras for effective COVID-19 vaccine communication - with all 5 mantras, is at this link. As this is a vitally important and current issue, please do review below and share your comments, reactions and suggestions, by email or on the platform, in support of and as a contribution to the work of everyone in the network. Thanks - W) 

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.

Ed: For the full blog including the rest of this mantra and the other 4 mantras: science, art and craft; local shots in the arm; whole ecosystem approach; and long-haul communication, please click here. Please do send comments by email or on the platform. Agree? Disagree? Your mantras? Thanks - W

Comments

Submitted by tturk on Thu, 12/10/2020 - 14:44 Permalink

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.

Submitted by ivan.somlai on Mon, 12/14/2020 - 14:09 Permalink

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).

Submitted by Jane Sherman on Mon, 12/14/2020 - 14:26 Permalink

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