Bexley Vaccine Confidence

I was vaccinated because Covid is a crushing weight on the world and anything I can do to lighten the load is a step in the right direction.

Bexley Resident

About the partnership

1. In Bexley, partners worked together to better increase vaccine confidence.
2. The Local Authority developed and undertook a comprehensive series of targeted communication, engagement, and outreach activities.
3. Healthwatch Bexley and the Young Foundation were commissioned to carry out “deep dives” exploring the reasons why certain groups of residents may not want to be vaccinated, and how future communication and engagement on other health and wellbeing issues could be improved.

What has gone well

1. Training to support those working with residents to have meaningful conversations about vaccination and health, and address frequently asked questions. Developed in partnership with Bexley Voluntary Service Council (BVSC) and British Society for Immunology.
2. Reassurances from local GPs and locally targeted communications may have helped ease some people’s anxieties and built vaccine confidence.
3. The ‘Let’s Talk Covid-19’ testing and engagement bus that visited local areas. A range of partners including local community champions, London Fire Brigade, and voluntary sector partners supported the outreach activities.
4. Partners were able to bring complementary local contacts, knowledge, referral mechanisms, skills, and experience to the programme.

Challenges experiences and overcome

1. Number of reasons hesitancy were identified, just as mistrust in pharmaceutical companies, which was overcome by targeted community engagement.

Results

1. Participants who undertook the training were very positive – with 77% of community leaders strongly agreeing they felt more confident and knowledgeable in having conversations about vaccines and 70% of health and care workers reporting they increased their number of vaccine conversations with residents.
2. The programme reached c.9000 people via Outreach and Deep Dives, 303 of whom were referred to get the vaccination on the day of engagement.
3. Of the 173 residents Healthwatch asked if they had enough information to make an informed choice about the Covid-19 vaccination, the majority (89%) felt they had enough information. This was a marked increase from the 16% in the previous survey who wanted to know more before making their decision.

What made the difference

1. Governance/oversight: the partners established an inclusive Vaccine Confidence Steering Group to oversee and coordinate the programme. Project leads for each part of the programme were appointed to ensure delivery.
2. Technology: the programme utilised technology to share findings and updates regularly, for example, outreach teams used a ‘real time’ Microsoft Forms system to report their daily interactions with residents back to wider partners.
3. Engaging residents in a non-judgmental way. Able to engage on wider health and wellbeing issues alongside vaccination conversations.
4. Built on and complemented existing initiatives: such as the local Primary Care Decliner Protocol.