Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Abdullah, Mujahid
• Ahmad, Taimoor
• Kazmi, Twangar
• Sultan, Faisal
• Afzal, Sabeen
• Safdar, Rana Muhammad
• Khan, Adnan Ahmad
• Harapan, Harapan

Titel

Community engagement to increase vaccine uptake: Quasi-experimental evidence from Islamabad and Rawalpindi, Pakistan

Ist Teil von

• PloS one, 2022-12, Vol.17 (12), p.e0274718-e0274718

Ort / Verlag

United States: Public Library of Science

Erscheinungsjahr

2022

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

MEDLINE

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Developing countries have been facing difficulties in reaching out to low-income and underserved communities for COVID-19 vaccination coverage. The rapidity of vaccine development caused a mistrust among certain subgroups of the population, and hence innovative approaches were taken to reach out to such populations. Using a sample of 1760 respondents in five low-income, informal localities of Islamabad and Rawalpindi, Pakistan, we evaluated a set of interventions involving community engagement by addressing demand and access barriers. We used multi-level mixed effects models to estimate average treatment effects across treatment areas. We found that our interventions increased COVID-19 vaccine willingness in two treatment areas that are furthest from city centers by 7.6% and 6.6% respectively, while vaccine uptake increased in one of the treatment areas by 17.1%, compared to the control area. Our results suggest that personalized information campaigns such as community mobilization help to increase COVID-19 vaccine willingness. Increasing uptake however, requires improving access to the vaccination services. Both information and access may be different for various communities and therefore a "one-size-fits-all" approach may need to be better localized. Such underserved and marginalized communities are better served if vaccination efforts are contextualized.