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 at 10:34 AM EDT

Geneva, Switzerland, May 01, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- 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 AHO
Advancing 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 Alliance
Gavi, 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 Impact
Global 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

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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

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