Strengthening Evidence-Based Vaccine Communication Through Knowledge Mobilization: COVID-19 as an Exemplar

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic was a public health threat that brought societal, community, and individual challenges to the forefront. Despite African, Caribbean and Black (ACB) communities being highly impacted by COVID-19, they had low rates of vaccine uptake. This pragmatic qualitative study has explored service providers’ experiences as vaccinators and vaccination promoters, including how they mobilized evidence-based vaccination communication to improve vaccine uptake within the most affected groups, such as in ACB communities. The theoretical framework of intersectionality guided the research process and Thorne’s (2016) interpretive description methodology with Braun & Clark’s (2006) thematic analysis were used to guide data analysis derived from the 22 in-depth individual interviews (IDIs) of service providers, which were obtained from purposeful and snowball sampling techniques. Analysis resulted in three main themes: 1) Mistrust and empowerment, which provided insight into reasons for low vaccine uptake within the communities; 2) Active listening and education, which detailed ways the communities were informed of vaccinations; and 3) Optimizing knowledge mobilization, which focused on the process of vaccination communications. These findings address the knowledge gap pertaining to effective vaccination communication to reach the most affected communities, including creating supportive and sustainable infrastructure, contextualizing vaccination campaigns to local community needs, and improving interpersonal skills to meet the unique needs of clients. Effective vaccination communication is pivotal to vaccine uptake, as it provides a means to make informed barrier free vaccination decisions.