The Importance of Digital Engagement
Despite a considerable investment in vaccine supply and delivery in the past decades, many children still miss out on basic childhood vaccines. Persistently low and declining coverage in some countries are influenced by a combination of factors, including vaccine availability, access to services and their quality and sub-optimal demand for immunization due to vaccine hesitancy, an increasingly recognized concern across countries.
The top three reasons for vaccine hesitancy remain to be:
a) Concerns related to vaccination risk and benefit (scientific evidence)
b) Religion, culture, gender, socioeconomic factors
c) Lack of knowledge and awareness of vaccination and its importance
The perception of risk/benefit may also be influenced by vaccine-related misinformation, manifested noticeably in the digital and social media space.
Persistently low and declining coverage in some countries are influenced by a combination of factors, including vaccine hesitancy, an increasingly recognized concern across countries.
The workstream on addressing misinformation and strengthening digital engagement brings together various organization and institutions at global regional and country levels, experts, practitioners, representatives of government institutions, academia, civil society organization, think tanks to examine how misinformation and the anti-immunization discourse influence public trust and confidence in vaccine, to identify and document ways to address rumours and misinformation and to design, implement, test, evaluate and document effective tools and approaches in this area.
Our Workstream Objectives
The Digital Information Environment workstream aims to facilitate exchange of information, support research and dissemination of promising approaches to conducting social listening to inform prevention and mitigation efforts around vaccine misinformation.
- Ensure exchange of information and good practices among its members, contributing, thus, to better coordination and cooperation, mutual learning and more efficient use of resources.
- Contribute to the global ‘body of knowledge’ around the issues of promoting a supportive information environment, addressing misinformation and strengthening digital engagement.
- Identify knowledge gaps and priority areas of action and research. When appropriate, collaborate on implementation research and assessments at national, regional and global level.
- Support efforts to develop training materials and tools for use in country capacity development to research and address misinformation-related challenges.
- Engage with social media platforms in a collective effort to prevent/reduce misinformation and its impact on caregivers’ immunization decisions, strengthen proactive promotion of pro-immunization messages on social media and digital platforms.