HEALTH & NUTRITION

IMPROVING CHILDHOOD VACCINATION

The Sabin Vaccine Institute (Sabin) has awarded grants to research teams in four countries to explore the social drivers of COVID-19 misinformation, and its impact on routine immunization acceptance and the acceptance of a COVID-19 vaccine. The funding which are part of Sabin’s Social and Behavioral Interventions for Vaccination Acceptance Small Grants Program, will help researchers in low- and middle-income countries to better understand the social drivers of vaccination and design small-scale interventions to assess their impact on vaccination acceptance.

In India, Dr. Rajeev Seth, MBBS, MD, DNB, a senior consultant pediatrician leading Bal Umang Drishya Sanstha, a non-profit organization in New Delhi focused on child health and welfare for marginalized children, will lead a team of researchers to study community health worker perceptions of and misinformation surrounding vaccines. Co-lead investigators from Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, represented by Baldeep Dhaliwal, MPH, and Dr. Anita Shet, MD, from the Department of International Health within the International Vaccine Access Center, will collaborate with Dr. Seth and a team of researchers on the project. The virtual study will employ multi-pronged community health worker interventions in the Mewat district of Haryana, India, to address barriers to vaccine acceptance. BUDS has been working in Mewat since 2003.