Healthcare professionals play a critical dual role in vaccination programs around the world. They administer vaccines and they provide reliable information to inform people and to address their questions or concerns. However, they rarely receive training for this second task.

Strong evidence from psychological and communication sciences suggests that how a healthcare professional speaks with (not at) a person is as important as what they say in supporting someone to come to an informed choice about their health. Healthcare professionals can be trained to have short dialogues with patients in the clinic, which effectively increases the person’s receptivity to new information.

Some key principles of this program:

To have effective vaccine discussions, a healthcare professional needs foundational knowledge on vaccines and vaccination, and information to respond to emerging questions, concerns, and misinformation.

This program is identifying and consolidating best-in-class online courses and communications assets on vaccines, vaccinology, and vaccine communication. Key resources that are both authoritative and accessible will be openly available to HCPs worldwide on the Infodemiology.com platform.

With an eye to building sustainability and scalability, this program is running in-person trainings of trainers who may then go forth and teach other HCPs to communicate more effectively both in-person and online.

The first learning program teaches a simple yet potentially powerful relational algorithm called AIMS (Announce, Inquire, Mirror, Secure) to help HCPs have more effective vaccine-related conversations. Disagreement can feel like a threat, triggering a “fight-or-flight” response which clouds our ability to think rationally and trust. AIMS is a science-based approach to establishing trust, creating the relational conditions for greater receptivity to an HCPs advice. It is easy to learn and AIMS conversations can be surprisingly quick.

With ever increasing numbers of people seeking health information online, one HCP can potentially inform and reassure thousands of people about vaccines. A second training program teaches HCPs how to successfully and safely become social media influencers. Full of cutting-edge insights and tips, this live training program builds the confidence and skills of HCPs to effectively use social media to communicate with the public, and help them make informed decisions about their health.

Both teach-the-teacher programs are taught with a rich blended learning approach involving online videos and other resources and a dynamic and participative live training curriculum.

There will also be behavioral insights studies in each country to better understand the perceptions of HCPs on vaccines and advocating about vaccines.

The program is currently running in Brazil and Japan, with a view to two other countries on two other continents in 2025. Training sessions were held in Brazil in June 2024 (see short video above).

The primary objective is to show that this approach to building healthier health information ecosystems is feasible and effective. We engage with many stakeholders in each country and region and will provide a blueprint of this full blended learning program, along with all materials (trainer guides, videos, worksheets), to partners who wish to cascade the trainings.

Ensuring that vaccination programs across the world continue to protect people and communities against terrible infectious diseases requires public trust. This program is taking a first step toward building back public confidence through enabling and multiplying trusted HCP voices.