Strong community engagement has been critical to support COVID-19 vaccine uptake in Australia and elsewhere. Community engagement builds trust, enables tailored information dissemination and shapes social norms. Engagement is particularly important in communities with greater vaccine hesitancy, lower health literacy and mistrust in authorities. Early in 2021, as a team of vaccine social scientists and clinicians, we developed a program to train and empower community, faith, industry and healthcare leaders to advocate for COVID-19 vaccines as “vaccine champions”. We partnered with the Victorian Department of Health to deliver 91 online Vaccine Champions sessions from March 2021 to June 2022. Over 80 people who received this training were supported by the Department of Health to become formal vaccine champions, independently delivering over 100 locally tailored information sessions. Our survey evaluation of 20 sessions delivered in 2022 found most participants (94%, 118/125) felt more confident to discuss safety and effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines and find relevant information after attending a session. We also recorded >90% participant satisfaction with training content, format and presentation. Qualitative feedback from two group interviews highlighted the value of vaccine communication role plays and opportunities for discussion. In this brief report, we present an overview of the Vaccine Champions program, evaluation and next steps.
Keywords: COVID-19 vaccine; communication; community engagement; peer-to-peer; vaccination.