From Insights to Impact: Results from a Five-country Process Evaluation to Address Vaccine Hesitancy Online

Abstract for Preformed Panel Presentation from the 2022 International SBCC Summit in Morocco:

"Vaccine hesitancy is recognized by the World Health Organization as one of the leading threats to global health worldwide. Social media has the potential to reach millions of people with informative content through credible sources, but public health agencies have limited evidence-based tools to design and evaluate their digital health communications, particularly in low- and middle-income countries. This 5-country study was undertaken to understand whether strategic digital content could be designed and evaluated for its potential to shift knowledge and attitudes toward vaccine confidence, and strengthen vaccine demand. Four countries (India, Kenya, Pakistan and Ukraine) focused on COVID-19 vaccines, while The Philippines targeted routine immunization activities.

Leveraging detailed insights from social media, local intelligence and behavioral science, this partnership designed 33 campaigns with 100+ messages tested in various languages through UNICEF [United Nations Children's Fund] country offices. Campaigns were launched on Facebook, and assessed using a 5-item survey administered to users who were randomized to have seen the ad sets (intervention) compared to those who had not (control). Content was highly recalled, resulted in 3.88M clicks to online vaccine resources, and reached over 192M Facebook users over the test period. Content in local languages tended to have more user engagement, and values-based campaigns also achieved statistically significant increases in the perceived importance of vaccines, and whether users would recommend vaccines to friends/family. This study demonstrated a process that public sector partners can adopt for designing and assessing health communications at scale, to inform future vaccine demand efforts."