Bay Area Global Health Alliance Joins Leading Global Health and Private Sector Organizations to Create the Alliance for Advancing Health Online to Improve Global Health Outcomes
COMING SOON: On September 30, the Bay Area Global Health Alliance and Sabin Vaccine Institute will launch the Vax Up podcast series to highlight diverse, present-day examples of social media’s capacity to impact vaccine confidence and health behaviors.
[June 10, 2021] Leaders from the technology, healthcare, global development, and academic sectors have come together to announce the Alliance for Advancing Health Online, a new initiative to advance public understanding of how social media and behavioral sciences can be leveraged to improve the health of communities around the world. The Alliance will bring together Bay Area Global Health Alliance, the CDC Foundation, Facebook, the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy, MSD (trade name of Merck & Co., Inc., Kenilworth, N.J., USA (NYSE:MRK)), Sabin Vaccine Institute, the Vaccine Confidence Project at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, the World Bank and the World Health Organization.
MSD and Facebook, members of BAGHA, have each committed $20 million to this multi-year initiative, which will initially focus on addressing vaccine hesitancy and vaccine equity with a strong focus on historically excluded or marginalized communities. In addition, the Alliance intends to create a global network of centers of social media and health research focused on improving health behavior via online platforms.
“Social media is a powerful, constantly evolving tool that is shaping opinions and behaviors across the globe,” said Heidi Larson, PhD, Head of the Vaccine Confidence Project at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. “The Alliance will help us build a deeper understanding of the dynamics of health-related engagement online and investigate new ways the global community can use social media to improve health.”
As part of the broader initiative, the first step is the establishment of an independent Vaccine Confidence Fund to support research on how social media and online platforms can be leveraged to best support confidence in and uptake of COVID-19 and routine vaccinations around the world. This fund is financially supported by Facebook and MSD. The goal of this initial research is to produce timely, practical applications, focused on historically excluded or marginalized communities globally.
“The Alliance for Advancing Health Online and the new Vaccine Confidence Fund are important steps forward in leveraging social media for health impact at scale. A recent collaboration between WHO and Facebook demonstrated what this can achieve, said Andy Pattison, Team Lead, Digital Channels, World Health Organization. “WHO’s Science Behind Vaccines campaign ran globally, resonating most among Spanish and Chinese speaking audiences who expressed an increase willingness to get the COVID-19 vaccine by 2.8 and 2.9 percentage points, respectively, across more than 50 million people.”
Launch of Independent Research Fund
The Vaccine Confidence Fund will provide grants to researchers and organizations that are exploring how best to use social media and digital platforms to understand and address vaccine hesitancy in order to help build confidence in vaccines. The Fund will be global and have a strong focus on historically excluded or marginalized communities. Global Impact will independently manage this fund and has issued a request for proposals that researchers and organizations who would like to participate in this effort can find here.
All of the findings generated through this research will be shared quickly, broadly and publicly. To this end, Facebook is awarding grants to the Sabin Vaccine Institute and Bay Area Global Health Alliance who will facilitate a series of community discussions over the coming months.
"Social media and online platforms have a unique role to play in promoting vaccine acceptance. We are thrilled to collaborate with these outstanding partners, convene cross-sectoral conversations, and lift up insights on how social media can work to improve health outcomes, especially in underserved communities here and around the world,” said Sara Anderson, Executive Director of BAGHA. While the initial focus of research supported will be on COVID-19 vaccinations and routine immunizations, the Alliance will seek to advance research on using social media to provide credible information about vaccination generally and to advance a broad range of health outcomes – with further details expected to come later this year.
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CDC Foundation
“It is critical to provide an infrastructure to provide equitable access to vaccines in marginalized communities, but equally important to work with communities to better understand how to provide meaningful information in the places that matter the most,” said Lauren A. Smith, MD, MPH, Chief Health Equity and Strategy Officer, CDC Foundation. “Social media is changing the way we communicate, and this research endeavor will help answer important questions around how people are navigating, understanding and acting on information. Ultimately, we need to help people find accurate, research-based information through trusted voices so all people, especially those who have experienced persistent health inequities, can confidently make healthcare decisions.”
MSD
“The first step in addressing health issues like vaccine hesitancy is understanding the underlying reasons and meeting people where they are. This collaborative effort is an important step toward better understanding how social media is already being used by people as they make choices about their health, said Priya Agrawal, MD, MPH, Chief Behavioral Science Officer, MSD. These insights — which will be shared quickly and broadly — will enable the global public health community to better employ social media and online platforms to help people to make choices that can improve their health offline.”
“By bringing together public and private sector partners, we hope the Alliance will give us the ability to have a lasting impact on improving health behavior by leveraging social media and other digital technology,” said Kang-Xing Jin, Head of Health, Facebook. “Together with partners, we’re seeing some promising results from our health work, which underscores the opportunity of the Alliance to better understand what’s working so it can be replicated and scaled.”
Sabin Vaccine Institute
“Building confidence in vaccination and addressing preventable diseases has never been more urgent. We’re excited to work together with this esteemed group to highlight research, resources and expert voices, and promote evidence about how social media can be used to create actionable solutions for immunization programs,” said Kaitlin Christenson, MPH, Vice President, Vaccine Acceptance and Demand, Sabin Vaccine Institute.
MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy
“The Vaccine Confidence Fund presents a great opportunity for researchers and practitioners to leverage social media, particularly in combination with additional data sources, to better understand how decisions and policies in one area may affect actions in others,” said Amin Rahimian, University of Pittsburgh and MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy. “Through better understanding, we can create more effective strategies to contain the COVID-19 pandemic and, importantly, increase vaccine confidence and uptake.”