Overcoming barriers to vaccine acceptance in the community: Key learning from the experiences of 734 frontline health workers

What works in practice to build vaccine confidence?

Reda SadkiGlobal health

This is the content of a poster about vaccine confidence presented today by The Geneva Learning Foundation (LinkedIn | YouTube | Podcast | X/Twitter) at the International Social and Behavior Change Communication Summit 2022 (#SBCCSummit) held 5-9 December 2022 in Marrakech, Morocco. What is the Geneva Learning Foundation? Get the full report… Read the preface by Heidi Larson… Vaccine confidence: from responding to the initial shock of the pandemic to preparing COVID-19 vaccine introduction Over 6,000 health professionals joined the COVID-19 Peer Hub in July 2022, part of the Geneva Learning Foundation’s (TGLF) global immunization learning-to-action platform. We asked a simple question in relation to vaccine confidence: Can you think of a time when you helped an individual or group overcome their initial reluctance, hesitancy, or fear about vaccination? Who participated? Local practitioners from 86 countries joined this peer learning exercise about vaccine confidence: Health system levels: So what? What was the significance of the experience for participants? …

Heidi Larson: “So much remains determined by the capacity of people on the frontlines to explain, advocate, and respond in ways that are almost entirely dictated by context”

Reda SadkiGlobal health

This is the preface by Heidi Larson for the report “Overcoming barriers to vaccine acceptance in the community: Key learning from the experiences of 734 frontline health workers”. This report is presented today by The Geneva Learning Foundation (LinkedIn | YouTube | Podcast | Twitter) at the International Social and Behavior Change Communication Summit 2022 (#SBCCSummit) held 5-9 December 2022 in Marrakech, Morocco. What is the Geneva Learning Foundation? Get the full report… Read the preface by Heidi Larson… My own consciousness of the fragile equilibrium sustaining vaccine confidence came from working with immunization programmes and local health workers to defuse rumors that threatened to derail vaccination initiatives. Twenty years ago, this meant traveling to countries to meet, build relationships with, and work side-by-side with frontliners. Since that time, the corpus of research on the topic has grown tremendously. Elaborate behavioral science frameworks, supported by robust monitoring and evaluation, are now available to guide policy makers, donors, …

Digital challenge-based learning in the COVID-19 Peer Hub

Reda SadkiGlobal health, Learning, Writing

A digital human knowledge and action network of health workers: Challenging established notions of learning in global health When Prof Rupert Wegerif introduced DEFI in his blog post, he argued that recent technologies will transform the notions and practice of education. The Geneva Learning Foundation (TGLF) is demonstrating this concept in the field of global health, specifically immunization, through the ongoing engagement of thousands of health workers in digital peer learning. As images of ambulance queues across Europe filled TV screens in 2020, another discussion was starting: how would COVID-19 affect countries with weaker health systems but more experience in facing epidemic outbreaks? In the global immunization community, there were early signs that ongoing efforts to protect children from vaccine preventable diseases – measles, polio, diphtheria – would suffer. On the ground, there were early reports of health workers being afraid to work, being excluded by communities, or having key supplies disrupted. The …

What is the Movement for Immunization Agenda 2030 IA2030

What is the Movement for Immunization Agenda 2030 (IA2030)?

Reda SadkiGlobal health

The Immunization Agenda 2030 (IA2030) and the Movement for Immunization Agenda 2030 represent two interconnected but distinct aspects of a global effort to enhance immunization coverage and impact. What is Immunization Agenda 2030? Immunization Agenda 2030 or “IA2030” is a global strategy endorsed by the World Health Assembly, aiming to maximize the lifesaving impact of vaccines over the decade from 2021 to 2030. Watch the Immunization Agenda 2030 (IA2030) inaugural lecture by Anne Lindstrand (WHO) and Robin Nandy (UNICEF) What is the Movement for Immunization Agenda 2030? The Movement for Immunization Agenda 2030, on the other hand, is a collaborative, community-driven effort to operationalize the goals of IA2030 at the local and national – and to foster double-loop learning for international partners. It emerged in response to the Director-General’s call for a “groundswell of support” for immunization and combines a network, platform, and community of action. The Movement focuses on turning …

Learning for knowledge creation WHO Scholar programme

Learning for Knowledge Creation: The WHO Scholar Program

Reda SadkiGlobal health, Learning strategy, Scholar Approach

Excerpted from: Victoria J. Marsick, Rachel Fichter, Karen E. Watkins, 2022. From Work-based Learning to Learning-based Work: Exploring the Changing Relationship between Learning and Work, in: The SAGE Handbook of Learning and Work. SAGE Publications. Reda Sadki of The Geneva Learning Foundation (TGLF), working with Jhilmil Bahl from the World Health Organization (WHO) and funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, developed an extraordinary approach to blending work and learning. The program started as a series of digitally offered courses for immunization personnel working in various countries, connecting in-country central planners, frontline workers, and global actors. The program was designed to address five common problems in training (Sadki, 2018): the inability to scale up to reach large audiences; the difficulty in transferring what is learned; the inability to accommodate different learners’ starting places; the need to teach learners to solve complex problems; and the inability to develop sufficient expertise …

General Assembly of the Movement for Immunization Agenda 2030 on 14 March 2022

Reda SadkiGlobal health

Summary of highlights from the Full Learning Cycle, Monday 14 March Resources Anglophones: link to slidedeck; link to recording Francophones: link to slidedeck; link to recording

Arve Henriksen – Groundswell

What is the value of strategy in the middle of a global crisis?

Reda SadkiGlobal health, Learning strategy

A new global vision and strategy titled ‘Immunization Agenda 2030: A Global Strategy to Leave No One Behind (IA2030)’ was endorsed by the World Health Assembly less than a year before the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a Public Health Emergency of International Concern. Today, the cumulative tension of both urgent and longstanding challenges is stretching people who deliver vaccines. Challenges include immunization service recovery, COVID-19 vaccine introduction, and the persistence of epidemic outbreaks of diseases that can already be prevented by vaccines. Is this the right time to launch a global strategy – especially one developed before the pandemic – to achieve the immunization goals? Yes, immunization staff the world over – and the societies we live in – are still reeling from the shock of the COVID-19 pandemic. Nevertheless, in times of crisis, thinking and acting strategically can help each of us stay focused on the global immunization goals, keeping us on the path to equitable …

Two false dichotomies: quality vs. quantity and peer vs. global expertise

Reda SadkiGlobal health, Global health

The national EPI manager of the Expanded Programme for Immunization (EPI) of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), just addressed the COVID-19 Peer Hub Teams from DRC and Ivory Coast, saluting both teams for their effort to prepare and strengthen COVID-19 vaccine introduction. I am honored to have been invited and pleased to see how this initiative is not only country-led but truly owned and led by its participants. She has joined the Inter-Country Peer Exchange (reserved for COVID-19 Peer Hub Members) organized by the Peer Hub’s DRC Team to share rapid learning from COVID-19 vaccine introduction. In the room are immunization professionals, primarily those working for the Ministries of Health, directly involved in vaccine introduction from both countries and from all levels of the health system. Other COVID-19 Peer Hub country teams are organizing similar inter-country exchanges, in response to their own needs, building on what they have …

What does the changing nature of knowledge mean for global health?

Reda SadkiGlobal health, Learning strategy

Charlotte Mbuh and I will be welcoming Julie Jacobson, one of the founders of Bridges to Development, for our 15-minute Global Health Symposium about neglected needs of women’s health, and specifically the upcoming Female Genital Schistosomiasis (FGS) workshop being organized by the FAST package, a group of international and country partners. Join the Symposium on Facebook, YouTube, or LinkedIn. (If you miss the live stream, the recording is immediately available afterward, via these same links.) During the Ebola crisis response of 2014-2015, I sweet-talked Panu Saaristo into doing the first “15-minute global health symposium”, giving him just 6 minutes for an update about the complex work he was leading. (You can read about it here.) I still remember every point of his presentation and the emotion associated with it, as he described how Red Cross volunteers were risking their own lives to help families bury their dead safely. It turns …

Social network and citation network in the COVID-19 Peer Hub

Disseminating rapid learning about COVID-19 vaccine introduction

Reda SadkiGlobal health, Global health, Learning strategy

In July 2019, barely six months before the pandemic, we worked with alumni of The Geneva Learning Foundation’s immunization programme to build the Impact Accelerator in 86 countries. This global community of action for national and sub-national immunization staff pledged, following completion of one of the Foundation’s courses, to support each other in other to achieve impact. Closing the loop from learning to impact produced startling results, accelerating the rate at which locally-resourced projects were implemented and fostering new forms of collaborative leadership. Alumni launched what immediately became the largest network of immunization managers in the world. Then the pandemic dramatically raised the stakes: at least 80 million children under one were placed at risk of vaccine-preventable diseases such as diphtheria, measles and polio as COVID-19 disrupted immunization service as worldwide. Alumni were amongst the first in their countries to respond, leveraging the power of being connected to each other …