Promising Practices for Engaging Local Faith Actors (LFAs) to Promote Uptake of COVID-19 Vaccination – Lessons Learned from Four Countries: Ghana, Indonesia, Sierra Leone, and Uganda
Engaged local faith actors (LFAs)1 have long contributed to promoting and achieving increased immunization uptake, coverage, and equity within their communities.2 Today, LFAs are vital contributors to the success of the largest global public health vaccination campaign of the past century. Despite crippling COVID-19 vaccination shortages in low- and middle- income countries (LMICs) to date, religious leaders have still drummed up vaccine enthusiasm and quelled their congregants’ fears by being publicly vaccinated, issuing theological proclamations on COVID-19 vaccine acceptability, and working closely with Ministries of Health (MOH) to implement COVID-19 messaging campaigns.
Yet LFAs in many highly-religious LMICs3 are being under-supported and under-utilized for COVID-19 vaccination promotion and delivery by MOH, donors, and partners. This represents a missed opportunity to increase demand for COVID-19 vaccines, as vaccine supply is projected to rapidly increase soon. The policy brief below summarizes findings from a July–August 2021 qualitative review of promising practices for engaging LFAs in promotion, scale-up, and delivery of COVID-19 immunization.