Facilitating vaccination acceptance and uptake through social and behavioural science approach

Abstract Even though there are relatively high overall levels of vaccination coverage in the EU/EEA, there are pockets of unvaccinated or under-vaccinated groups. Vaccination coverage rates for adult populations, including seasonal vaccinations offered to healthcare workers and boosters offered to older adults and risk groups, are suboptimal in many EU/EEA countries. The COVID-19 pandemic behavioural factors had a significant impact on vaccination acceptance and uptake during the rollout of COVID-19 vaccination programmes. Social inequalities created barriers to vaccination for certain population groups, which needed to be identified and addressed in order to ensure equitable access to COVID-19 vaccination programmes. The presentation will include the 5Cs Model that provides a structured way of understanding the core areas that may influence an individual's willingness and readiness to get vaccinated and it is based on five components that influence vaccination intentions and behaviour: Confidence, Complacency, Constraints, Calculation and Collective responsibility. The model may be used for diagnosing barriers and facilitators of vaccination acceptance in a population at a specific point in time or serially, over time, facilitating early detection of lower vaccination acceptance rates in identified populations and enabling prompt action. Secondly, a library of interventions collected from the European Union Member States will be presented. The interventions, implemented at national and subnational levels, were classified by which particular Cs from the 5Cs Model they address and are meant to inspire and inform the design of targeted interventions to address suboptimal vaccination coverage and relate to childhood vaccination, vaccination against human papillomavirus (HPV), vaccination against COVID-19 and influenza, and vaccination against other diseases (pertussis and mpox) and many of the interventions focus on vulnerable populations.