Encouraging vaccine confidence in Canada

Vaccines are fundamental tools for preventing infectious diseases, and low vaccination rates can threaten the health of Canadian and international communities. As the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has shown, complex factors influence the decision to accept vaccines. Some of these factors are dependent on science literacy levels and others are personal or societal. Achieving widespread vaccine acceptance requires an understanding of the need for vaccines, an understanding of the safety of vaccines, the removal of barriers to access vaccines, and greater confidence in vaccines. Canadians need reliable and trusted sources of evidence to inform their decisions about vaccines.

To meet this need, Encouraging vaccine confidence in CanadaPromoScience grants support organizations with strong track records of science and/or health promotion to deliver evidence-based, vaccine-promoting information to key communities and groups and/or to build capacity in the community to promote confidence in vaccines. Jointly administered by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), it is expected that funded activities will mobilize knowledge to improve public understanding of vaccines and help Canadians to make evidence-based decisions, especially among populations that are hesitant about vaccines. Activities supported by these grants should encourage participants to become discerning consumers of natural sciences and engineering, humanities and social sciences, and health information. Through their proposed activities, organizations should aim to build on existing networks, infrastructures and relationships with Canadian and international partners where possible.

Your application must describe activities that:

• deliver information on the safety and effectiveness of vaccines to key communities and groups, and/or
• build capacity in the community to promote the acceptance of vaccines

All activities should be interactive and should be delivered to a relevant subset of the Canadian population, which you will define in your application. Collaboration with trusted community leaders is strongly encouraged to ensure activities are appropriate and designed to reduce and/or remove barriers, particularly in instances where the intended audience is an underserved or vulnerable group. Funds may be used for new activities, or for improvements (including increased scope) to content or delivery of existing activities. The activities may address specific diseases, including COVID-19, or may broadly address vaccination.

Examples of eligible activities include:

• providing scientifically sound information about vaccines via social media, hotlines, webinars, forums or websites in a way that addresses beliefs and fears
• developing, translating and disseminating easy-to-understand and engaging materials on vaccine acceptance and adoption of public health measures in a culturally appropriate way
• delivering workshops to train community leaders on promoting vaccine confidence and sharing best practices for evidence-based decision making
• mobilizing social sciences and humanities knowledge to address cultural and societal determinants of vaccine hesitancy in order to better ensure vaccine confidence
• sharing historical perspectives on pandemics and vaccine development to build trust and confidence in the community
• providing techniques for identifying reliable sources of information versus misinformation pertaining to vaccines