Welcome!

VaccineLiteracy.org is home to a living bibliography:

Actions to Promote Vaccine Literacy

Here, you’ll find that this site is a tool for health communicators and practitioners who are seeking a blueprint for strategy, implementation design, and actions that support vaccine literacy.

 

What is Vaccine Literacy?

Vaccine literacy is a fundamental health literacy urgently required to address this current pandemic. Vaccine literacy occurs when the skills and abilities of people align with the content, processes, and systems needed to access and get vaccinated. Everyone, or their caretaker or family members, should be able to understand what they need to know and do related to their health, and specifically now for vaccination for COVID-19. Ultimately, this is dependent on content, processes, and systems for vaccination being easy to successfully access, navigate, and use.

Vaccine literacy is facilitated by eight tenets:

1. Individual knowledge informed by clear, trustworthy, up-to-date evidence

2. Ability to discern fact from fiction

3. Listening, encouraging questions, and dialogue

4. Providing understandable, trustworthy, up-to-date answers to questions

5. Understanding risks and benefits of vaccination for self and society

6. Successful education, access, and systems for vaccination

7. Prudent policies that incentivize vaccination and equity

8. Transparency, clarity, and confidence in vaccine quality, safety, and efficacy

Vaccine Literacy in the Time of COVID-19

 

The definition and operationalization of vaccine literacy captures the multidimensional elements that must work cohesively to ensure high uptake of vaccines. While “literacy” is traditionally measured on an individual-level, vaccine literacy cannot be removed from the interpersonal relationships, information sources, infrastructure, policies, and economic factors that ultimately facilitate it and must be assessed when fostering a vaccine confident public. Indeed, vaccine literacy is the ‘whole of society’ approach to understanding vaccination decision-making.