Vaccine Confidence Project

The Vaccine Confidence Project (VCP) founded in 2010 by Heidi Larson, was developed in response to hesitancy and misinformation on vaccination programmes such as those that caused a boycott of polio eradication efforts in Northern Nigeria in 2003–04. It is an early-warning system to identify and evaluate public confidence in vaccines, with the purpose of tackling the problem early, when it is likely to be manageable.

Vaccine Confidence Project

Nickname	VCP
Formation	2010
Purpose	To monitor public confidence in vaccines
Headquarters	London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine's Vaccine Centre
Director	Heidi Larson
Website	Official website

Housed in the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine's Vaccine Centre, the VCP uses a diagnostic tool that finds what sparks vaccine rumours, examines and evaluates what spreads those rumours and calculates the potential impact. It is a member of the Vaccine Safety Net, a project led by the World Health Organization.

Origins

The vaccine confidence project was founded in 2010 by Heidi Larson,[1] and developed in response to rumours and misinformation about vaccines such as those that caused a boycott of polio eradication efforts in Northern Nigeria in 2003–04.[2][3] It is housed in the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine's Vaccine Centre.[2][4][5]

Purpose

The purpose of the project is to monitor public confidence in immunisation programmes by building an information surveillance system for early detection of public concerns around vaccines.[6][7]

The VCP is an early-warning system which identifies and evaluates public confidence in vaccines, with monitoring capabilities in some 63 languages. It aims at tackling problems early, when they are likely to be manageable, because as Larson explains: "early detection of and timely response to vaccine rumours can prevent loss of public confidence in immunization".[2][5] It then aims to inform policy-makers of its findings.[8]

The toolkit

The VCP uses a diagnostic tool that finds what sparks vaccine rumours, examines and evaluates what spreads those rumours and calculates the potential impact.[2]

Rumour diagnostic tool

I. Rumour Prompters (“the triggers”)	II. Sustaining and amplifying factors	III. Outcome and impact
Media and social media reports	Geographic spread	Vaccine refusals (or refusal of other disease control intervention)
News research	Frequency of rumour reported	Vaccine is suspended (often fuelling more anxiety and rumours)
New product	Historic bad experience that lowers public trust
New recommendation or policy change	Media reports	Vaccine-preventable disease outbreaks
Adverse event following immunization	Socioeconomic marginalization
Political motivations	Previous existence of self-organized community groups

Source: Larson presentation, 13 December 2016.[2]

Research

The VCP is a member of the Vaccine Safety Net, a project led by the World Health Organization. Its researchers and team members include anthropologists, digital analysts, epidemiologists and psychologists.[9] In 2011, research by the VCP found that refusal to vaccinate against polio increased in the Taliban dominant areas of Balochistan and FATA following rumours about the polio eradication programmes, triggered by the story of the CIA's fake immunisation campaign in the search for Bin Laden.[10] In spring of 2020, the VCP carried out a survey of people's attitudes to a COVID-19 vaccine.[7] The following September, in The Lancet, the VCP published the largest known study on vaccine confidence modelling. The study looked at data on the importance, efficacy and safety of vaccines in 290 national surveys of 284,381 adults in 149 countries, and found wide variation around the world.[11][12]

References

1. Das, Pamela (10 September 2020). "Heidi Larson: shifting the conversation about vaccine confidence". The Lancet. 0 (10255): 877. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(20)31612-3. ISSN 0140-6736. PMID 32919523. S2CID 221590163.
2. Building Communication Capacity to Counter Infectious Disease Threats: Proceedings of a Workshop. National Academies Press. 2017. ISBN 978-0-309-45768-2.
3. Ghinai, Isaac; Willott, Chris; Dadari, Ibrahim; Larson, Heidi J. (1 December 2013). "Listening to the rumours: What the northern Nigeria polio vaccine boycott can tell us ten years on". Global Public Health. 8 (10): 1138–1150. doi:10.1080/17441692.2013.859720. ISSN 1744-1692. PMC 4098042. PMID 24294986.
4. "Vaccine Confidence Project". www.validate-network.org. Retrieved 20 September 2020.
5. Anderson, Jenny (13 October 2020). "She Hunts Viral Rumors About Real Viruses". New York Times. Archived from the original on 19 October 2020. Retrieved 19 October 2020.
6. "The Vaccine Confidence Project". The Vaccine Confidence Project. Retrieved 25 September 2020.
7. Gellin, Bruce (1 August 2020). "Why vaccine rumours stick—and getting them unstuck". The Lancet. 396 (10247): 303–304. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(20)31640-8. ISSN 0140-6736. S2CID 220872330.
8. Figueiredo, Alexandre de; Simas, Clarissa; Karafillakis, Emilie; Paterson, Pauline; Larson, Heidi J. (10 September 2020). "Mapping global trends in vaccine confidence and investigating barriers to vaccine uptake: a large-scale retrospective temporal modelling study". The Lancet. 0 (10255): 898–908. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(20)31558-0. ISSN 0140-6736. PMID 32919524. S2CID 221590846.
9. "WHO | Vaccine Confidence ProjectTM". WHO. Retrieved 20 September 2020.
10. Mohammadi, Dara (4 August 2012). "The final push for polio eradication?". The Lancet. 380 (9840): 460–462. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(12)61279-3. ISSN 0140-6736. PMID 22870511.
11. Van Beusekom, Mary (11 September 2020). "Rising vaccine wariness in some nations doesn't bode well for COVID vaccines". CIDRAP. Retrieved 21 September 2020.
12. Salmon, Daniel A.; Dudley, Matthew Z. (10 September 2020). "It is time to get serious about vaccine confidence". The Lancet. 0 (10255): 870–871. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(20)31603-2. ISSN 0140-6736. PMID 32919522. S2CID 221590831.