Online training over 4 weeks during 25 June–21 July 2022
Co-hosted by WHO, UNICEF, US CDC and GAVI
Deadline for application: 8 May 2022 at 18:00 Geneva Switzerland time
Background
As COVID-19 vaccine supply improves, achieving high global vaccination coverage will require strengthening health systems that can generate robust demand for vaccines including maintaining and restoring of routine immunization, and promote public health and social measures, diagnostics and therapeutics to curb the COVID-19 pandemic.
However, there are barriers to achieving and maintaining high coverage. Challenges with decreased trust in health authorities, unsettled science, and the infodemic also negatively impacts adherence to health guidance. Addressing challenges to vaccine confidence—the belief that vaccines work, are safe, and are part of a trustworthy medical system—requires the right expertise and local insights. We need to address these challenges by filling human resource gaps, sharpening skills and building interdisciplinary connections needed to maintaining and restoring and strengthening routine immunization, COVID-19 vaccine demand and support public health and social measures in countries during COVID-19 recovery.
This training, for the first time, ties together the interrelated threads of infodemic management, behavioral insights and social data and intervention design into a training and rostering strategy that addresses country needs now. Trainees will be equipped with the latest tools, resources and expertise to comprehensively promote vaccine demand, supported by expertise from WHO, UNICEF, US CDC, GAVI and partners from the Vaccination Demand Hub.
The training will bridge science with extremely practical applications and best practices across the following:
- Social data and science of vaccine demand
- Immunization program, preparedness & service strengthening
- Behaviorally-informed public health intervention design
- Digital interventions and infodemic management
- Community engagement
- Science, risk and health communication
- Service experience and delivery improvement
Purpose
- Build capacity of participants to address critical health and immunization program needs by:
- Providing diagnostics and socio-behavioral insights into challenges to routine immunization and COVID-19 vaccination uptake, or uptake of PHSM in specific communities
- Developing evidence-based strategies, messages, materials and reports
- addressing critical immunization program needs, designing and deploying effective interventions that are centered around the needs of communities
- Incorporating M&E and health systems strengthening approaches to support critical immunization program needs and other emergency response efforts.
Scope
Applicants will gain skills and receive tools to be able to be effective in the field in vaccine demand promotion and fill acute human resource constraints in their own jobs or other countries. In addition, top- performing trainees will be considered for rostering and assignments in the field depending on specific skillsets needed in countries.
The applicants will be included in the training by a selection panel based on eligibility criteria.
Participation in the training is free to participants.
Working language of the training will be English and French and trainees must have working proficiency in at least one of these languages. Subsequently, resources and materials will be provided and publicly available in additional official UN languages (Spanish, Chinese, Russian, Arabic).
Planned time commitment of trainees and achievement of course completion:
- 25 hours of lectures/discussions over the course of 25 June–21 July 2022 (1 welcome session, 1 hour and 8 class sessions, 3 hours each)
- Sessions will take place on Zoom, in form of lectures and breakout working groups/discussions
- During the training, trainees will work in groups via WhatsApp to discuss and deliver recommendations for actions in a three-week simulation/case study. This will take additional 2 hours per week.
Trainees need to be present at minimum 80% of sessions, demonstrate active take up of skills and knowledge in a post-training test, and actively contribute to the group work in case study in order to receive a certificate of participation. Additional assessments will be given to top-performing trainees to be considered for rostering and a training certificate.
Eligibility criteria:
WHO and partners invite applications from experienced professionals from the fields of:
- vaccine demand and/or health promotion
- infodemic management
- health service design and delivery
- applied behavioral science
- health data analysis
- epidemiology, and
- social and behavior change communication
Criteria for eligibility:
- Have work experience of 5+ years in one of the above areas at sub/national or international level, or 2+ years and advanced agree
- Previous experience working in multicultural settings and workplaces
- Desirable: previous exposure to implementation science or research, or evaluation of programmes
- Desirable: Immunization program-related experience
- Desirable: COVID-19 response-related experience
- Desirable: Working knowledge of both English and French languages
Applications
Interested applicants should fill out the application form, include a link to a 4 minute personal video responding to the below questions, and CV and submit via this web form.
- Staff currently working at international, national and subnational health system levels, as well as consultants and academics are invited to apply.
- People previously trained by WHO, UNICEF, US CDC, GAVI or other immunization program partners on above topics are encouraged to apply, as advanced topics and new tools will be covered in this training.
Applications should be submitted by 8 May 2022 at 18:00 Geneva Switzerland time.
Specific application materials
- Completed application form at this link here
- CV in the attached format (download here)
- A personal video statement
- Max 4 minutes long
- Submit a link to video in the application form (you will need to upload it to another web space and link it in the web form)
- In the 4 minute video, answer the following:
- Why do you wish to take this training and deploy to support the global COVID-19 response and routine immunization?
- In addition, respond to two of the following questions. These questions are situational and assume that you have been deployed to support the COVID-19 response in a country:
- Recent immunization administration data shows a marked disparity in vaccine coverage between men and women. Women had a 20% drop in vaccines administered compared to men for the past three months. What are some ways you might investigate the reasons why there is this disparity and how to address it?
- Young people ages 18-29 have the lowest immunization coverage out of all groups but immunization program staff are not quite sure why. How might you investigate reasons for low vaccine uptake and develop effective strategies to promote vaccine demand in this population?
- In a recent RCCE meeting, a leader from a minority pastoralist community complained that none of the official vaccine materials and messages were tailored to their community. They aren’t available in the preferred language, the images are inappropriate and the format—big billboards and jingles on the radio—don’t reach this community that is often on the move. How might you ensure that content is tailored to this pastoralist community?
- How would you go about determining who is considered a trusted messenger in a community where there is low vaccine coverage, low confidence, and suspicion and mistrust of government health services?
- Recent media coverage of COVID-19 topics is sensationalist and sometimes inaccurate. A recent meme circulating on closed messaging apps suggested that several women had miscarriages after getting vaccinated, which spurred widespread media speculation about whether COVID-19 vaccines were safe for pregnant women. The meme is reprinted in several newspapers and included testimonials from women who decided not to get vaccinated because of concerns about how it would affect their babies. The Ministry of Health is concerned how this will affect vaccine uptake for pregnant women, who have some of the lowest vaccination coverage. What strategies would you recommend for addressing this issue?
- You receive a cache of data: 3 months worth of social listening reports, a recent KAPB survey, an executive summary of 12 focus group discussions and a C-PIE report, all related to COVID-19 vaccines and the general population with only national-level level data available. How might you conduct integrated analysis of these data to get a snapshot of current issues that may affect vaccine demand?
- How might you work with a national medical or public health association to address vaccine hesitancy among health workers, which is affecting vaccine confidence among the general public?
- How do you determine if low vaccine coverage in a specific population is due to access barriers or related to demand or infodemic challenges?
- You are tasked with designing an intervention strategy to promote COVID-19 booster vaccine uptake among older citizens 65+. How would you go about building an intervention for this population? How would you test and implement it?
- A provincial governor decides that the best way to increase vaccine uptake in her province is to offer small cash awards to people who get vaccinated and be entered in a lottery to win a luxury car. Neighboring provinces are not offering any types of incentives for vaccination. What are some potential benefits or pitfalls of this approach?
- The country COVID-19 response is being widely criticized for issuing confusing guidance and being slow to respond to emerging questions and concerns as the vaccination program and the pandemic evolve. A new national poll indicates erosion of trust and widespread belief in common vaccine misinformation. An infodemic management strategy is needed. How would you go about building one?
- The Ministry of Health is keen to routinely collect behavioral data related to adherence to public health and social measures and vaccination. However, they have a limited budget and would be unable to run nationally representative KAP surveys more than once every six months. What suggestions would you have on how to collect, analyze and use behavioral data more routinely and cost-effectively?
- A specific community with extremely low COVID-19 vaccine uptake has been identified as a priority for Ministry of Health to increase coverage in. Your manager expects you to direct a small team to collect data and provide insights within three weeks with a very limited budget. What is your approach?
- Adherence to public health and social measures is dropping, and booster shot administration rates have also recently slowed. Specific groups are advocating for fewer pandemic restrictions and for medical freedom. COVID-19 no longer registers as a serious public health threat to many communities. Vaccines are expiring instead of going into arms. What new strategy would you propose to the Ministry of Health to promote vaccine demand?
- An email is forwarded to you from the Minister of Health’s office about the latest piece of misinformation casting doubt on the efficacy of an approved vaccine in the country, driving vaccine preferences toward other approved vaccines. The misinformation also suggests there is corruption at the Ministry of Health. The Minister’s office wants to know how to stop this misinformation from spreading and suggests someone call the CEO of the country’s social media company to take down this misinformation. How would you respond to the Minister’s office? What would be your action plan to address the situation?
- You are tasked with developing an M&E plan for vaccine demand and infodemic management activities. What are some questions you’d ask to develop indicators for these activities? What indicators would you suggest? What are some indicators you think would not be helpful to track?
- The national COVID-19 vaccine communications and demand strategy was published with great fanfare six months ago. However, the budget to conduct community engagement, support the national media campaign, promoting vaccine ambassadors and training health workers to have effective vaccine conversations has just been cut by 80%. How would you prioritize specific activities or find ways for unfunded activities to continue?
- How might you go about creating a social norm that support COVID-19 vaccination? How would you create it in digital and physical environments? What types of activities could support socially norming vaccination?
- The Ministry of Health is considering implementing vaccine mandates for health workers after consistently low vaccine uptake. Among health workers, coverage is estimated at 34%, even though the health system continues to be overwhelmed with COVID-19 cases. What strategic advice would you have for the Ministry on how to increase COVID-19 vaccine uptake among health workers and implementing mandates?
