Geneva, 1 May 2024 – Global Impact, as fiscal sponsor for the VaxSocial Initiative is pleased to announce the selection of seven organizations that will receive funding totaling US$ 12 million though VaxSocial – an initiative focused on demonstrating how social media can help build vaccine confidence.
AHO and Gavi recognize that while extensive research has been undertaken to understand vaccine hesitancy and social behaviors, more efforts are needed to understand how social media can most effectively be implemented to promote behavioral change for health in a cost-effective and equitable way. VaxSocial seeks to fill this gap by supporting country-driven projects that leverage social media and behavioral science to build confidence around routine immunizations and drive scale and replicability in approach across geographies.
Selected organizations from India, Indonesia and Nigeria were invited to apply through a process managed by Global Impact, the fiscal sponsor. The projects selected will explore innovative, promising approaches that leverage social media to empower and educate populations to make positive health choices around vaccination. Please see the sample list below of funding recipients from the VaxSocial Initiative.
“We are excited to continue to advance into the next phase of the VaxSocial Initiative, during which grantees will test and trial innovative approaches to help build vaccine confidence through the use of social media and behavioral science,” said Drew Otoo, President, Global Vaccines at MSD. “Given the role social media plays in informing healthcare decisions, I am confident these programs will demonstrate the value of social media platforms as an effective tool within broader comprehensive social and behavior change campaigns. This will shape the way they are leveraged in the future by the global health community to maximize health impact around the world.”
“We’re excited to be supporting the selected proposals as we’ve seen the role online platforms can play to help improve global health outcomes, such as scaling and personalizing content globally at a low cost,” said Lu’chen Foster, Senior Director of Social Impact Partnerships at Meta. “We’re committed to deliver on AHO’s mission through our collaboration with Gavi to support innovative, promising, and multi-disciplinary approaches that leverage social media to empower and educate populations to make positive health choices around vaccination.”
“Gavi is committed to supporting interventions that drive greater cost-effectiveness and impact of vaccine programs. Our partnership with AHO and these newly selected grantees for VaxSocial represents a new opportunity for us to leverage the power of the private sector and technology in combination with the power of communities,” said Augustin Flory, Managing Director, Innovative Partnerships & Development Finance at Gavi. “Together we will generate new evidence and learn about how social media can lead to real outcomes on the ground for immunization programmes. We are thrilled to welcome the new grantees and we look forward to what their work will teach us.”
Laura Shevlin
+ 41 79 529 92 87
lshevlin@gavi.org
Meg Sharafudeen
+41 79 711 55 54
msharafudeen@gavi.org
Cassie Call
press@charity.org