Immunize
Immunize aims at generating useful content about COVID-19 vaccines to fight vaccine hesitancy and increase its uptake by individuals. The program is currently funded by GIZ.
Through this project, we aim to use a data-driven approach to systematically target districts with low vaccine uptake and high levels of hesitancy, in various Indian states. We digitally distribute the content through our website, social media channels and distribution partnerships. Through this project, we aim to curate and validate scientifically accurate information with the help of experts and make it easily available to both the general population and the scientific community.
We aim to cut the information clutter for the common masses by translating hard scientific facts into simple bites of information while at the same time summarizing scientific publications for the overwhelmed health professionals and experts.
Social media platforms play an important role in spreading information quickly. They can be channeled to help the people believe in the safety and efficacy of immunization and COVID-19 vaccination. Communication focusing on the benefits of vaccines, their safety, efficacy, long-term gains, myth-busting, and personal experiences via the internet and community-based platforms to improve confidence in the COVID-19 vaccines has not yet been undertaken in research studies and needs to be understood better. With the WHO listing vaccine hesitancy as one of the top ten threats to world health, the spread of false information on social media platforms must be an urgent cause for concern and needs to be countered with positive and factual information and we are working towards the same.