Developing a Country-Observatory for sharing best practices for vaccination promotion

There is considerable variation in how European stakeholders are tackling vaccination hesitancy and how healthcare professionals promote vaccination campaigns for COVID-19. Population hesitance and the communication skills of healthcare professionals are among the most important factors that need to be addressed for COVID-19 vaccines and beyond. There is also a need for cross-country initiatives that can allow knowledge-sharing as it is demonstrated in variability of vaccine coverage observed during the COVID-19 pandemic. The consortium of this project has been involved in research that has demonstrated for example that (a) the transmission of vaccination messages to the population has been conducted with various levels of success with a need to advance stakeholders' abilities and opportunities to engage in successful vaccination promotion initiatives and (b) vaccination hesitancy is a complex problem that requires the mobilization of different actors from healthcare professionals to local governments. The co-OPERATOR project aims to capitalize on these evidence with an aim to develop and pilot a knowledge hub, virtual observatory and training system in participating countries as proof-of-concept that will collect, organize, and disseminate knowledge, best practices, and resources related to stakeholders' strategies used and needs towards vaccination against COVID-19 and beyond with an emphasis on advancing communication, knowledge skills whilst recognizing and tackling systemic barriers and facilitators for promoting vaccination messages to the population. Theoretical frameworks from the behavioral sciences such as COM-B and 7C Models are used to allow mapping of different country needs and where policymakers need to focus their efforts and target their interventions. A Policy Making Lab will allow translation of evidence into policymaking suggestions that will be piloted in five Member States (Belgium, Cyprus, Greece, Italy and Portugal).