Social and behavior change (SBC) professionals have often been tasked to find ways to influence knowledge, attitudes, and practices, about vaccines. Now that the COVID-19 vaccines are becoming available worldwide, renewed emphasis and urgency for SBC efforts arise.
To that end, WHO has offered thre...e factors that play a role in vaccine hesitancy, the first two of which can be addressed by SBC: Complacency: Low perceived risk of vaccine-preventable diseases, and vaccination not deemed necessary. Other life/health issues are a greater priority.
Confidence: Low levels of trust in vaccines, in the delivery system, and in health authorities
Convenience: Barriers related to geographic accessibility, availability, affordability, and acceptability of services
This resource page provide a selection of SBC research, tools, and examples that aid in understanding this issue, especially in light of the recent availability of COVID-19 vaccines and the urgency for immunization worldwide.
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Health Situation
Health policies and systems
Cooperation for Health
WHO Country Cooperation Strategic Agenda (2008-2013)
According to WHO, around 22% of adults in conflict settings have mental health conditions.
This is almost triple to non-conflict settings. There is no generally accepted estimate for children but it is clear that children who are refugees, IDPs or who live in conflict settings have high levels of m...ental health issues.
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17 February 2021
This article is part of a series of explainers on vaccine development and distribution. Learn more about vaccines – from how they work and how they’re made to ensuring safety and equitable access – in WHO’s Vaccines Explained series.
A practitioner’s guide to the principles of COVID-19 vaccine communications.
The factors that lead people to make choices to take vaccines are nuanced and affected by how they see the world, their perceptions of the choices people like them will make, who they trust, their perceptions of risk,... consistency of message and convenience of actually getting the vaccine.
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This strategy takes into account the policies formulated by sectors with cross-cutting interests in school meals, such as education, health, social protection and agriculture.The strategy further complements the provisions of the National School Health Policy and the asso...ciated National School Health Guidelines (2009) into a school meals framework with six strategic objectives. Above all, the strategy encourages inter-ministerial coordination, multi-sectoral planning, stable funding and monitoring and evaluation for home-grown school meals to all children in Kenya.
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A wide range of potential enablers and barriers were identified for influencing progress for the scale-up of severe wasting services within national health systems. Findings were categorised according to the six pillars of WHO’s health system strengthening framework.
The report “Build back fairer: achieving health equity in the Eastern Mediterranean Region” provides ground breaking insights into the state of health inequities in the Region and urges countries to take action to address the social determinants of health to reverse the worsening trend of inequi...ty – aggravated by the COVID-19 pandemic, ongoing conflict, mass movements of people, environmental challenges, gender inequities and unemployment.
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COVID-19 Vaccines: 1 Safety Surveillance 2 Manual
While there is no indication that pregnant women have an increased susceptibility to infection with SARS-CoV-2, there is evidence that pregnancy may increase the risk of severe illness and mortality from COVID-19 disease in comparison with non-pregn...ant women of reproductive age. As seen with non-pregnant women, a high proportion of pregnant women have asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection and severe disease is associated with recognized medical (e.g., high body-mass index (BMI), diabetes, pre-existing pulmonary or cardiac conditions) and social (e.g., social deprivation, ethnicity) risk factors. Pregnant women with symptomatic COVID-19 appear to have an increased risk of intensive care unit admission, mechanical ventilation and death in comparison with non-pregnant women of reproductive age, although the absolute risks remain low. COVID-19 may increase the risk of preterm birth, compared with pregnant women without COVID-19, although the evidence is inconclusive.
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The report presents the latest data on more than 50 health-related Sustainable Development Goal and "triple billion" target indicators. The 2021 edition includes preliminary estimates for global excess deaths attributable to COVID-19 for 2020 and the state of global and regional health trends from 2...000-2019. It also focuses on persistent health inequalities and data gaps that have been accentuated by the pandemic, with a call to urgently invest in health information systems to ensure the world is better prepared with better data.
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This brief summarizes current evidence and guidance for maintaining safe and effective care across the spectrum of maternal, newborn and infant care while protecting mother and child and health care providers during COVID-19. Furthermore, implications of the principle of “do no harm” are reviewe...d for maternal, newborn and infant care delivery during COVID-19, so that this information is conveniently and readily available to clinical and health system policy leaders and stakeholders in countries and communities. Additionally, considerations for safe oxygen delivery as well as key Infection Prevention and Control (IPC) measures at home and in healthcare facilities for pregnant women, newborns and children are described in detail in the brief.
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Health promotion is the process of enabling people to increase control over, and to improve, their health. To reach a state of complete physical mental and social wellbeing, an individual or group must be able to identify and to realize aspirations, to satisfy needs, and to change or cope with the e...nvironment. Health is, therefore, seen as a resource fo everyday life, not the objective of living. Health is a positive concept emphasizing social and personal resources, as well as physical capacities. Therefore, health promotion is not just the responsibility of the health sector, but goes beyond healthy lifestyles to wellbeing.
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Key findings from a February 2021 survey from the Partnership for Evidence-Based Response to COVID-19 (PERC)
Since the emergence of COVID 19 in December 2019, various public health responses measures have been implemented to control the pandemic. Among measures taken by the Africa CDC was the launch of PACT initiative to accelerate COVID 19 testing. Key to the initiative is the engagement of Community Heal...th Workers (CHWs) in risk communication and community engagement (RCCE), surveillance activities for early case identification, contacts tracing and in facilitating referrals for testing and continuum of care.
As of 31 May 2021, Through PACT support, over 17154 CHWs have been trained and locally deployed in 24 AU Member states. The PACT supported CHWs visited more than 2,568,654 households for community engagement activities, active case search and contact tracing, identified 1,618,601 Contacts, 710,167 COVID 19 suspect cases based on the standard case definition and facilitated referrals for 553053 (78%) suspect cases for testing. These efforts were crucial for early identification and isolation of cases in limiting further transmission.
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