Rooted in data, driven by humanity

Polarization, mistrust, and disinformation were growing long before the coronavirus pandemic emerged, but these societal dysfunctions have grown more prevalent and more prominent since the pandemic began in early 2020.

The Vaccine Confidence Project™ (VCP) has spent the last ten years tackling these issues. Through the Vaccine Confidence Index™ (VCI), a tool for mapping confidence, we help to inform the strategies and designs for immunization programmes so human and financial resources can be designed for and with the communities they serve.

The VCP began by developing a system for early detection of public concerns about vaccines. Through it, the VCP collects data and applies a diagnostic tool to determine the risk level as to whether those concerns could disrupt vaccine programmes and uptake. Our insights guide when and how to respond, offering an opportunity to build and sustain confidence in vaccines and immunization.

Going Beyond Vaccines

The VCP has learned that a vast majority of the challenges around vaccine confidence have little to do with the vaccines themselves. Rather, the vaccine confidence challenge is a window into the broader issues of our polarized, mistrustful society.

As a society, polarization of sentiments and beliefs make it increasingly difficult to have a true conversation with those we may disagree with. The consequences of this divisive polarization are immense not just for our own personal relationships, but for trust across society - for governments, for business and for the simple and normal functioning of human society.

In order to address this growing divide, we are building on the learnings of the VCP to now launch The Confidence Project, to find practical and actionable solutions to build mutual trust and narrow the caverns that divide us, by opening minds and building alliances.

MacArthur Grant

Our work on the crucial role confidence and cooperation plays in recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021 caught the attention of the MacArthur Foundation. The foundation has given The Confidence Project a major grant so it can begin this work in a focused and specific way.

Beginning right away, the grant will help The Confidence Project tackle the issue of vaccine confidence in three vastly different cities across the globe: Abuja, Nigeria; Delhi, India and New York City.

Each of the cities are at different stages in the pandemic:

• Abuja is facing a new wave of Covid cases and deaths, with July 2021 seeing the highest case count in months. This comes on the heels of a period of covid-denialism, lax social distancing, and rumor-driven vaccine anxieties. Trust building is crucial to managing the response.

• Earlier in the year, Delhi experienced one of the most fatal and debilitating waves of COVID-19 in the world, after they too thought that they had managed to escape the severity of Covid that Europe and the US had seen. Trust in government declined as services couldn’t cope with the onslaught of severe cases.

• New York City , with the first major outbreak in the United States before vaccines were even available, still has pockets of resistance even in the boroughs that were hardest hit, such as The Bronx.

In these settings The Confidence Project will identify groups whose underlying distrust and/or historic issues around marginalization have undermined their confidence in vaccines. By developing strategies to address the underlying levers of trust, rather than merely correcting misinformation, the project expects trust in and uptake of the vaccine to increase, as well build confidence in other COVID-19 control measures.

Though most of the interventions will be broad, but some will be tailored to people between the ages of 18-35, which multiple country studies show have the most scepticism around Covid-19 vaccinations.