How evidence-driven policy analysis and advocacy strengthens immunisation systems across Gavi-supported countries
In a world of finite resources, immunisation advocacy is how Gavi ensures that stakeholders invest in a shared global health security.
- 4 December 2025
- 6 min read
- by Gavi Staff
As lower-income countries navigate health financing and geopolitical uncertainty, evidence-driven policy analysis and advocacy are central to protecting and expanding access to life-saving vaccines.
Gavi and Alliance partners work with countries to combine rigorous analysis with targeted advocacy so decision-makers can act quickly and fund what works.
This article highlights five practical areas where analysis and advocacy are accelerating progress toward Immunization Agenda 2030.
1. Focus advocacy where impact is clearest
Effective immunisation advocacy involves rigorous analysis and stakeholder coordination to invest in programmes with outsized social return and impact.
In practice, this includes quantifying resources, identifying and reaching zero-dose communities, and integrating routine immunisation with other high-impact programmes such as early childhood education, nutrition and adolescent health services.
Across Gavi, cross-functional teams provide partner countries with the right combination of analytical rigour and practical tools, ensuring that advocacy is rooted in solid evidence.
Evidence clarifies both the gap and the culturally acceptable solution. Geospatial mapping, robust data systems and economic evaluations assist countries aiming to improve health equity for underserved populations. In parallel, fiscal impact analyses have provided ministries of finance with concrete rationale to prioritise vaccines when resources are constrained.
Beyond setting priorities, data-driven investment cases build credibility. Policymakers respond to concise, evidence-backed arguments that show the health and economic value of immunisation. Across Gavi, cross-functional teams provide partner countries with the right combination of analytical rigour and practical tools, ensuring that advocacy is rooted in solid evidence.
2. Build and strengthen local partnerships
Sustained advocacy requires local champions who connect technical evidence to community realities. Gavi’s model of collaboration with governments, multilateral agencies, civil society organisations (CSOs) and community-based groups has proven instrumental in translating national commitments into results and ensuring accountability.
A clear example is the partnership with the Nigerian Governors’ Wives Forum (NGWF). By equipping the forum with evidence and advocacy tools, partners supported domestic resource mobilisation for routine immunisation and strengthened accountability at state level.
Similar coalitions with faith-based organisations, women’s groups, youth networks and professional associations have reinforced demand for vaccines and improved public trust.
At the regional level, the partnership with the Organisation of African First Ladies for Development (OAFLAD) has been pivotal in cultivating political will for scaling-up HPV vaccination, prioritising adolescent health and advancing the key pillars of cervical cancer elimination.
Furthermore, Gavi’s collaboration with OAFLAD provides an annual platform for stakeholders in the region to align on strategies for domestic resource mobilisation towards immunisation and adolescent health.
These partnerships are most effective when they are data-driven, aligned with national priorities, and backed by investments – ensuring that advocacy ecosystems are sustainable and continue to function after specific projects or campaigns end.
3. Policy analysis and advocacy as a toolkit for managing fragility
The global landscape for immunisation continues to evolve even as countries face geopolitical uncertainty, economic headwinds, climate change, and public health emergencies.
The World Health Organization Regional Office for Africa reported that, as of September 2025, the region had experienced 82 outbreaks, and there were 102 ongoing events and 19 humanitarian crises.
Consequently, it is important to highlight across all levels why well-funded immunisation systems are needed to avert infectious disease outbreaks, deaths, and loss of livelihood. Monitoring and analysing macroeconomic and political trends enable Gavi and the Alliance to anticipate challenges and develop informed responses.
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For instance, where fiscal pressures threaten domestic health budgets, data-driven dialogue helps governments to identify areas where investments would generate the highest health, social and economic return, with a focus on health equity and protecting the most vulnerable. In fragile or conflict-affected settings, geospatial data and community advocacy are being used to ensure sustained immunisation for displaced and hard-to-reach populations.
In addition, advocacy grounded in objective evidence helps maintain policy continuity during political transitions. Reliable data, for instance, provides decision-makers with a non-partisan and measurable metric for prioritising immunisation as a cost-effective intervention for national development.
By maintaining a focus on results and transparency, Gavi-supported advocacy efforts continue to sustain access to life-saving vaccines in partner countries.
4. Domestic health financing matters now more than ever
The sustainability of immunisation programmes increasingly depends on countries’ ability to mobilise and co-finance Gavi-supported immunisation programmes. While Gavi’s support continues to play a catalytic role, national ownership of health financing remains the most important objective.
Evidence-driven advocacy has been central to this transition. Through country-led expenditure analyses, fiscal space assessments, and financial forecasts, Gavi and Alliance partners support countries to integrate immunisation more fully into their medium and long-term expenditure frameworks and national budgets.
Advocacy efforts often focus on strengthening the dialogue between ministries of health and finance, and aligning immunisation performance with fiscal priorities, return on investment and long-term economic resilience.
This approach has proven effective in countries progressing along Gavi’s transition pathway, where domestic co-financing and national budget allocations are increasing. The results of this advocacy can be described as phenomenal. In July 2024, nine African nations signed the Abidjan declaration, committing to bear the entire costs of immunisation from their national budgets once they transition from Gavi support.
Importantly, the Abidjan declaration offers a platform for peer learning and support among its signatories, helping countries to share and learn best practices while managing the transition process in their various health systems. Enhanced domestic health financing has become even more important as traditional global health donors increasingly scale down their support.
By institutionalising budget lines for immunisation and linking them to performance indicators, countries can build systems that are more transparent, accountable, and resilient to external shocks. In this sense, evidence-based advocacy is not only a tool for persuasion but a mechanism for sustainability.
5. Analytics, AI and regional manufacturing as agents of future transformation
The future of vaccine access will increasingly depend on innovation ranging from digital data systems to novel vaccine manufacturing technologies.
Evidence-based policy analysis and advocacy are already shaping this future. In Africa for example, growing interest in local and regional vaccine production is being guided by analytical work that quantifies potential impacts on supply security, regional self-reliance and broader industrialisation in the continent.
Gavi’s continued commitment to strengthening data systems ensures that countries are equipped not only to collect information but also to share and use it effectively for advocacy, planning, and decision-making.
By demonstrating the long-term value of investing in manufacturing ecosystems, including on advancing workforce development, addressing regulatory barriers, and improving access to vaccines during public emergencies, evidence-based advocacy has helped align governments, private investors, and development partners around a shared vision.
Similarly, new digital tools are transforming the generation and the use of evidence. Advanced analytics, artificial intelligence and real-time monitoring systems enable more precise forecasting of vaccine demand, efficient resource allocation and faster feedback loops between data collection and policy action.
Gavi’s continued commitment to strengthening data systems ensures that countries are equipped not only to collect information but also to share and use it effectively for advocacy, planning, and decision-making.
The result is an adaptive policy environment where evidence continually informs implementation and innovation accelerates progress.
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