Mercy Corps is a global team of humanitarians working together on the front lines of today’s biggest crises to create a future of possibility, where everyone can prosper. In more than 40 countries around the world, over 5,600 team members work side by side with people living through poverty, disaster, violent conflict and the acute impacts of climate change. We’re committed to creating global change through local impact — 85 percent of our team members are from the countries where they work. We bring a comprehensive approach to every challenge, addressing problems from multiple angles. And we go beyond emergency aid, partnering with local governments, forward-thinking corporations, social entrepreneurs and people living in fragile communities to develop bold solutions that make lasting change possible.

In the attached report and its accompanying policy brief, we draw on evidence from past vaccine rollouts and lessons-learned from Mercy Corps programming during COVID-19 to document and analyze the ways in which mistrust of vaccines and vaccine providers poses significant barriers to vaccine uptake, especially in fragile and conflict-affected settings. To overcome vaccine hesitancy, we emphasize the need to close gaps in government accountability and we call for deep, inclusive, and sustained local community engagement to generate trust. We argue that this will be critical to preventing future disease spread and addressing the second-order impacts of the pandemic on inequality and insecurity.

We also offer a set of targeted recommendations to the Biden-Harris administration and the U.S. Congress, including: 

Fund local civil society organizations and locally-trusted INGOs to conduct comprehensive community engagement before and during vaccination programs; 

Rely on evidence-based approaches to improve effectiveness of vaccine rollouts; 

Increase investments in humanitarian assistance as well as long-term economic recovery, conflict prevention, and peacebuilding; 

Coordinate with multilateral institutions and ministries of health to ensure equitable and efficient vaccine distribution and uptake. 

Community Engagement for Effective COVID-19 Vaccination 

Overcoming-The-Trust-Deficit_Vaccine-Community-Engagement-Report.pdf

Vaccine-Community-Engagement-Policy-Brief.pdf

Overcoming the Trust Deficit - Vaccine Community Engagement Report and Policy Brief