Quick look

Quick look: Messages that build trust and motivate vaccination

Use values of care and love to build trust in the vaccination process instead of delivering facts about safety.

People may say they need more information to feel confident in vaccination, but leading with safety and risk information does not reassure them.

Share knowledge and partner on the development of vaccination communications with all communities.

Provide information to make access to vaccination easy. Give practical information on how, where and when.

Provide a positive vision of life after the pandemic, getting back to the things and people we love (especially useful in lockdown or outbreak situations).

Motivate people to get vaccinated by talking about caring for and keeping people they love and know well.

Put health workers who care about people’s wellbeing in the picture to help build trust in the system.

Lead messages with the collective benefits of vaccinating. Avoid leading with the risks of not vaccinating.

Avoid framing vaccination as an individual choice, with individual risks and benefits.

Explain how when we all get vaccinated it gives all of us protection by keeping the virus out (collective immunity).

Assume willingness to vaccinate and leverage these good intentions.

Avoid urgency framing. Frame vaccination as one of many effective tools we are using to keep ourselves well.

Normalise vaccination. Tell stories of people moving from hesitancy, ambivalence or ‘wait and see’ to action. Have people who are trusted and perceived as experts within each community talk about why they got vaccinated.

When dealing with false information, first alert people to the common strategies that people will use to spread false information and erode trust in vaccination.