The Communication Initiative
Development action with informed and engaged societies
The Communication Initiative
After nearly 28 years, The Communication Initiative (The CI) Global is entering a new chapter. Following a period of transition, the global website has been transferred to the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) in South Africa, where it will be administered by the Social and Behaviour Change Communication Division. Wits' commitment to social change and justice makes it a trusted steward for The CI's legacy and future.
 
Co-founder Victoria Martin is pleased to see this work continue under Wits' leadership. Victoria knows that co-founder Warren Feek (1953–2024) would have felt deep pride in The CI Global's Africa-led direction.
 
We honour the team and partners who sustained The CI for decades. Meanwhile, La Iniciativa de Comunicación (CILA) continues independently at cila.comminitcila.com and is linked with The CI Global site.
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Household and community level factors and vaccine hesitancy - Journal paper

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New Research: Community engagement, local government, public participation, gender, ethnic and religious identity, and polio and routine immunization


Published in the Journal: Vaccine


Title: Understanding vaccine hesitancy in polio eradication in northern Nigeria

The Communication Initiative  would like to direct your attention to this paper recently published in Vaccine. In the spirit of full disclosure this research was led by Dr Sebastian Taylor its Principal Investigator and coordinated by The Communication Initiative. Excerpts from the publicly available abstract follow.

Background: "Vaccine hesitancy constitutes a major threat to (polio eradication)" … "and to further expansion of routine immunization" … "equally important to protect and sustain the global gains available through routine immunisation in a time of rising scepticism and potential rejection of specific vaccines or immunisation more generally.”

Methodology: "Based on a purposive sampling survey of 1653 households in high- and low-performing rural, semiurban and urban areas of three high-risk states of
northern Nigeria in 2013-14 (Sokoto, Kano and Bauchi)"

Focus:  … "sought to understand factors at household and community level associated with propensity to refuse polio vaccine"

Findings: "Ethnic and religious identity did not appear to be associated with risk of OPV refusal"; "Risk of vaccine refusal was highly clustered among households within a small sub-group of sampled settlements. Contrary to expectations, households in these settlements reported higher levels of expectation of government as service provider, but at the same time lesser confidence in the efficacy of their relations with government".

Conclusions: "Results suggest that strategies to address the micro-political dimension  of vaccination – expanding community-level engagement, strengthening the role of local government in public health, and enhancing public participation of women – should be effective in reducing non-compliance, as an important set of strategies …"

You can access the full paper at this link - as this is a high quality journal it is necessary to pay to review the full paper. Given the need for our field of work to be published in significant, non-communication and media journals, this is a by-product.