Global Impact, on behalf of the Advancing Health Online Initiative (AHO) and Gavi, The Vaccine Alliance, invests $12 million through the VaxSocial Initiative to implement innovative social media interventions to build vaccine confidence
May 01 2024 - 10:34AM
Global Impact, as fiscal sponsor for the VaxSocial Initiative, is
pleased to announce the selection of seven organizations that will
receive funding through VaxSocial, a $12 million initiative focused
on demonstrating how social media can help build vaccine
confidence.
AHO and Gavi recognize that while extensive research has been
undertaken to understand vaccine hesitancy and social behaviors,
more efforts are needed to understand how social media can most
effectively be implemented to promote behavioral change for health
in a cost-effective and equitable way. VaxSocial seeks to fill this
gap by supporting country-driven projects that leverage social
media and behavioral science to build confidence around routine
immunizations and drive scale and replicability in approach across
geographies.
Selected organizations from India, Indonesia and Nigeria were
invited to apply through a process managed by Global Impact, the
fiscal sponsor. The projects selected will explore innovative,
promising approaches that leverage social media to empower and
educate populations to make positive health choices around
vaccination. Please see the sample list below of funding recipients
from the VaxSocial Initiative.
VaxSocial funding recipients:
- GroupM Media India PVT. LTD. (India)
- Center for Indonesia’s Strategic Development Initiatives
(Indonesia)
- Global Health Strategies (GHS)
- Nivi and Save the Children (Nigeria)
- HelpMum and Behavioral Insights Team (Nigeria)
- Upswell, Behavioral Insights Lab, Silver Lining for the Needy
Initiative, WellaHealth (Nigeria)
- IPSOS and M&C Saatchi World Services
(Evaluator)
“MSD has a longstanding commitment to advancing global health
and fostering vaccine equity, and we are confident the VaxSocial
Initiative will help enable these goals,” said Drew Otoo,
President, Global Vaccines at MSD. “Given the role social
media plays in informing healthcare decisions, it is critical we
leverage its power as a tool to help drive equitable health
education, vaccine confidence and ultimately behavioral
change.”
“We’re excited to be supporting the selected proposals as we’ve
seen the role online platforms can play to help improve global
health outcomes, such as scaling and personalizing content globally
at a low cost,” said Lu’chen Foster, Senior Director of
Social Impact Partnerships at Meta. “We’re committed to
deliver on AHO’s mission through our collaboration with Gavi to
support innovative, promising, and multi-disciplinary approaches
that leverage social media to empower and educate populations to
make positive health choices around vaccination.”
“Gavi is committed to supporting interventions that drive
greater cost-effectiveness and impact of vaccine programs. Our
partnership with AHO and these newly selected grantees for
VaxSocial, represents a new opportunity for us to leverage the
power of the private sector and technology in combination with the
power of communities,” said Augustin
Flory, Managing Director, Innovative Partnerships and Development
Finance at Gavi. “Together we will generate new evidence
and learn about how social media can lead to real outcomes on the
ground for immunisation programmes. We are thrilled to welcome the
new grantees and we look forward to what their work will teach
us.”
About AHOAdvancing Health Online (AHO), a
fiscally sponsored project of Global Impact, is an initiative
launched and financially supported by Merck & Co. Inc. Rahway,
NJ USA (known as MSD outside the United States and Canada) and Meta
in June 2021 to advance public understanding of how social media
can be utilized to better understand and increase the health and
resiliency of communities around the world by bringing actors
together from technology, health, global development, and the
academic sector. AHO’s goal is to support effective integration of
social media as a core component of social behavior change (SBC) to
improve health outcomes. To achieve this, AHO collaborates with
organizations working at the intersection of technology, global
health, and SBC.
About Gavi, the Vaccine AllianceGavi, the
Vaccine Alliance is a public-private partnership that helps
vaccinate half the world’s children against some of the world’s
deadliest diseases. Since its inception in 2000, Gavi has helped to
immunize a whole generation – over 760 million children – and
prevented more than 13 million deaths, helping to halve child
mortality in 73 developing countries. Gavi also plays a key role in
improving global health security by supporting health systems as
well as funding global stockpiles for Ebola, cholera, meningitis
and yellow fever vaccines. After two decades of progress, Gavi is
now focused on protecting the next generation and reaching the
unvaccinated children still being left behind, employing innovative
finance and the latest technology – from drones to biometrics – to
save millions more lives, prevent outbreaks before they can spread
and help countries on the road to self-sufficiency.
About Global ImpactGlobal Impact serves as a
trusted philanthropy advisor, intermediary, and nonprofit partner
for greater giving. We offer advisory and infrastructure services
that drive strategic philanthropy for our nonprofit, public, and
private sector clients. With close to 70 years of experience, we
have raised nearly $2.5 billion with our partners for global
causes. Global Impact is part of Global Impact Ventures, a family
of mission-driven organizations that serve all of philanthropy for
a better world.
Cassie Call
Global Impact
press@charity.org