iVaccinate Booklet

Vaccines are a fundamental tool to control the spread of infectious diseases. However, the underutilization of vaccines globally is concerning. There are multiple determinants of under vaccination including inadequate supply of vaccines, and lack of awareness and education about vaccination. While some of the barriers to vaccine uptake are structural, others are related to individual behavior with human behavior at the center of vaccine coverage. Behavioral science, which uses an interdisciplinary approach to systematically study human behavior, offers promise in designing interventions that use the behavioral and social determinants of vaccination to increase vaccine uptake. While behavioral science as a field has advanced significantly in the past decade, behavioral insights (BI) have been applied unevenly to immunization efforts.

We have completed a systematic review and meta-analysis of different behavioral interventions used to improve vaccine uptake. During the review process, we started with over 57,000 articles published between 1990 and March 2020. The search was narrowed with help from a medical librarian to over 15,000 articles that were included for title and abstract review. We reviewed full text of 872 studies and included 613 in our systematic review and meta-analysis. In this booklet, the iVaccinate Booklet, we provide strategies and tools to implement behavioral interventions to improve vaccine uptake. The booklet can be consulted to address specific barriers or challenges, or it can be used as a guide to scale up proven interventions for a larger population in any setting. The resources and studies for this project are available on the YIGH GitHub repository.