Increasing COVID Vaccine Uptake in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Multidisciplinary Approach
Speakers: Lauren Marks, J&J GPH; Sunny Sharma & Rebecca West, Ipsos; Kenneth Davis & Quinn Lewis, Fraym
Abstract: Johnson & Johnson Global Public Health (J&J GPH) has a mission of accelerating equitable healthcare delivery among the world's most vulnerable and underserved populations. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Africa has experienced a disproportionate burden of the disease and suboptimal vaccine uptake. This seminar showcases J&J GPH efforts to understand and combat vaccine hesitancy across the African continent by leveraging data and behavior science alongside private sector capabilities. Specially, Lauren Marks from Johnson & Johnson Global Public Health will discuss J&J's approach to understanding a target audience and designing interventions to reach them, with an emphasis on how and why to use tools like Behavioral & Attitudinal Segmentation, Message Testing, and Geospatial Analysis to find the right people with the right message.
Sunny Sharma and Rebecca West from Ipsos will then delve into the research findings from some of these studies. In 2021, J&J GPH and Ipsos conducted two phases of unbranded market research with unvaccinated adults in Kenya, Nigeria, and Zambia. First, a segmentation typing tool was designed and tested to define sub-groups of people according to attitudinal barriers and motivators to vaccinate -- the confident enthusiasts, enthusiastic pragmatists, vaccine skeptics, and COVID-19 cynics. Next, a discrete choice experiment was conducted to test optimal messages across sub-groups to support vaccine uptake. In this seminar, Rebecca and Sunny from Ipsos will present details of the segmentation study and recommended message strategies.
Lastly, Kenneth Davis and Quinn Lewis from Fraym will explore the Geospatial Analysis. In partnership with J&J GPH, produced machine learning (ML) enhanced spatial population data to 1) map levels of COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy, 2) model the underlying drivers of hesitancy based on Confidence, Convenience, and Complacency, and 3) replicate the five Ipsos population segments. These data and models were all produced down to the community and neighborhood level (1km2) across ten countries -- Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mali, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, Uganda, and Zambia. This insight is being delivered through a custom web-based application to inform risk communication and community engagement (RCE) and social behavior change (SBC) efforts among a wide variety of implementing partners working to increase COVID-19 vaccine uptake.
Bio: Lauren Marks leads USG partnerships for Johnson & Johnson Global Public Health, where she is responsible for developing partnership strategies, and executing insight-driven programs which achieve greater patient impact in Global Public Health. Previously, she managed the HIV/AIDS portfolio for Johnson & Johnson's Corporate Contributions group. Before joining J&J, Lauren spent most of her career in government, at the Department of State and USAID. She was the Director of Private Sector Engagement in the Office of the U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator and Health Diplomacy, which leads implementation of the U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). In this role, she built several multi-stakeholder partnerships and spearheaded large-scale innovation competitions to source new ideas to solve public health problems. She also served as the Health Program/Public-Private Partnership Advisor at USAID/South Africa, where she built several successful PPPs between the U.S. government, the private sector, and non-governmental organizations. Lauren worked at USAID/Washington in the Bureau for Global Health, where she provided technical support to USAID missions in several African and Asian countries. Before USAID, Lauren was a corporate attorney at Nixon Peabody LLP in New York. She has a law degree from Georgetown University and a B.A. from Duke University.
Sunny Sharma leads the Global Health practice within Ipsos UK. He has led research projects across HIV, TB, family planning, malnutrition, and vaccine hesitancy for makers, donors, private industry, and implementing partners primarily in sub-Saharan Africa and South/South East Asia. He specializes in behavioral science research and design research, ensuring that insight and research findings can be translated into tangible actions. He has been with Ipsos since 2011, and before solely focusing on Global Health in 2016, he supported private sector clients with their marketing research needs within the EU. He has worked to turn public health challenges into marketing challenges using techniques commonly used in the commercial sector to bring fresh approaches to the sector. Sunny holds an M.Sc. in International Healthcare Management from Imperial College London and a B.A. in Politics and Economics from the University of Newcastle.
Rebecca West is the Research Manager in Global Health at Ipsos UK, with expertise in adult HIV care and treatment and vaccine hesitancy in sub-Saharan Africa. She is passionate about using mixed methods to inform public health program implementation and improve care quality. Before joining Ipsos, she worked for the University of California, San Francisco Center for AIDS Prevention Studies and ICAP at Columbia University, as well as, completing a fellowship at Ariadne Labs/Harvard School of Public Health in Implementation Science. Rebecca holds an M.P.H. from Columbia University and a B.S. in Health from the University of Washington. She is currently a Doctor of Public Health candidate at Boston University. Her research has been published in journals including JAIDS, AIDS and Behavior, PLOS ONE, Journal of Global Health Science, and the International Journal of Health Policy Management, and she currently serves as a peer reviewer for PLOS Global Public Health.
Kenneth Davis is a New Business Manager with Fraym's Global Development team interested in leveraging emerging technologies to build a more just, equitable, and peaceful world. He is currently working with public health stakeholders to use spatial population data produced through machine learning to better understand people in the most data-scarce parts of the world. Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Kenneth has supported partnerships with multilateral organizations, global foundations, government agencies, and multinational companies to better mitigate the impact of the pandemic on the most vulnerable populations, develop more equitable country vaccination plans, and to disrupt the growing threat of medical misinformation and vaccine hesitancy. Previously, Kenneth worked as a business development professional at Global Communities and Creative Learning where he supported projects aimed at reducing the spread of HIV and preventing violent extremism. He has an M.A. in Ethics, Peace, and Global Affairs from American University and a B.A. in International Affairs and Religion from Florida State University.
Quinn Lewis is an Analytics Team Lead at Fraym, where he specializes in project management and geospatial data analysis with a focus on public health, agricultural productivity, and off-grid energy. He is currently working with public health and off-grid energy stakeholders, developing methodologies related to HIV risk, vulnerable population market segmentation, COVID-19 vaccine allocation, and rural electricity demand. Before Fraym, Quinn received an M.I.A. in International Development from the University of California, San Diego, where he was also a research assistant working on projects related to environmental variability and maternal and child health. Quinn is also a returned Peace Corps volunteer who served in Ethiopia from 2014 to 2016 where he worked at the intersection of agriculture, nutrition, and education.