Health Workers in Focus: Policies and Practices for Successful Public Response to COVID-19 Vaccination

"As facilitators and channels to reach the public, health workers represent a resource and an opportunity to help achieve successful COVID-19 vaccination uptake....However, fully leveraging health workers as positive influencers for COVID-19 vaccination is not straightforward..."

This document proposes five key strategies to empower health workers to help ensure successful public response to COVID-19 vaccination, each with five action points, and offers 20 activity examples as inspiration. It focuses on three health worker behaviours that affect public vaccination expectations, acceptance, and uptake:

• administering vaccines to patients in a way that makes patients feel safe, respected, comforted and informed;
• recommending the vaccine to patients and managing their expectations, regardless of whether they work with vaccination directly; and
• accepting the vaccine for themselves.

The five strategies explored in the document to support and empower health workers include:

• Understand health workers: Make continuous efforts to listen to health workers and understand the barriers and drivers they experience.
• Engage health workers: Involve health workers as active agents and partners in shaping the overall vaccination effort, and ensure that they feel respected and listened to.
• Motivate, support, and acknowledge health workers: Ensure the health system and managers at all levels provide care, consideration, and support to health workers.
• Build health workers' capacity on COVID-19 vaccination and its communication: Make effective and regularly adjusted efforts to build the knowledge, skills, and confidence of health workers.
• Value health workers as partners in a crisis: Make concerted efforts to engage and communicate with health workers regarding vaccine safety events, both before and during an eventual crisis.

An example from the 20 interspersed throughout the document: Engage health workers in campaigns directed at their peers or the public, or encourage them to promote vaccination through their own behaviour by wearing badges ("I am vaccinated against COVID-19") or sharing videos or stories through their personal and/or official social media platforms. Such stories can help to create positive social norms and identification, address misconceptions, and strengthen trust and vaccine acceptance. Health worker bodies or organisations can co-create and -own the campaign.

The World Health Organization (WHO) Regional Office for Europe urges governments, health authorities, and others involved in the COVID-19 pandemic response and COVID-19 vaccination rollout to adapt the lessons herein to the current epidemiological situation, to incorporate specific behavioural insights, and to consider appropriate societal, cultural, and economic factors to ensure no one is left behind.