Q&A: Building Trust and Demand for Vaccines
With Lisa Menning, Team Lead, Demand and Behavioural Sciences, WHO's Department of Immunization, Vaccines & Biologicals.
1. Immunization programmes have made enormous progress globally. Why is maintaining public confidence in vaccines a top priority for global health?
Public confidence is essential to sustaining high vaccination uptake and preventing outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases. Without trust, the health and equity gains achieved through immunization are at risk.
Understanding the behavioural and social drivers of vaccine confidence and uptake is also critical, as it helps countries identify the causes of low uptake, e.g., related to a lack of confidence, hesitancy, or access-related barriers. These insights can then be used to implement and evaluate the tailored interventions needed to achieve and sustain high uptake. This is particularly important in reaching under-immunized populations and reducing inequities.
2. How is the spread of vaccine-related misinformation influencing vaccination programmes today?
Vaccine-related misinformation is undermining trust, distorting perceptions of vaccine risk, and contributing to delays or declines in vaccination. It can spread rapidly across digital and community networks, making it harder for immunization programmes to respond in real time and sustain confidence. In some settings, misinformation can also amplify broader mistrust in institutions and weaken demand for vaccination.
3. What factors influence people’s decisions to delay or decline vaccines in different parts of the world?
Vaccine decisions are shaped by a range of factors, including confidence in vaccines, access to services, social norms, perceived disease risk, and trust in health authorities and health workers. These drivers are elaborated in our framework for measuring behavioural and social drivers of vaccination, with corresponding measures and tools.
What's important is that the drivers of vaccination vary across contexts and populations, meaning there is no one-size-fits-all solution. Understanding these factors is essential for designing effective, locally appropriate strategies to improve uptake.
4. What is WHO doing to help countries address misinformation and strengthen confidence in vaccines?
WHO supports countries with evidence-based guidance, behavioural insights, risk communication tools, health worker training, and community engagement approaches to build trust and respond to misinformation. This includes helping countries measure the behavioural and social drivers of uptake, strengthen listening and response systems, and tailor interventions to local concerns and barriers. The gathering and use of local data to guide planning and the evaluation of interventions is an area of particular emphasis. WHO also works with a range of partners to support accurate communication that is timely, transparent and grounded in communities’ needs.
5. As immunization programmes expand across the life course and new vaccines are introduced, how might the importance of building trust evolve in the future?
As immunization expands beyond childhood and new vaccines are introduced, building trust will become even more important to support high confidence and uptake across all age groups. Reaching adolescents, adults, older people and priority groups such as health workers will require more tailored engagement, communication and service delivery approaches. Trust will remain central to ensuring that vaccination across the entire life-course is accepted, equitable and sustainable.
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Further information: Vaccination Information Hub