Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)

Online Event: Trusting a Covid-19 Vaccine: Who’s Left Unheard?

In the face of rising cases of Covid-19 across the United States, many are hoping that the approval and rollout of novel coronavirus vaccines may offer a way to move beyond the worst effects of the pandemic. Yet recent polls indicate that despite confidence-building measures by government officials, pharmaceutical companies, and social media platforms, public trust in a vaccine remains in doubt. Studies have shown that trust is particularly low among communities of color who have been disproportionally impacted by the pandemic, with skeptics citing a lack of access to information about vaccines, systemic disparities in health care, and a legacy of discrimination and abuses such as the Tuskegee Syphilis Study as reasons for their enduring mistrust of the health care system.

Please join the CSIS-LSHTM High-Level Panel on Vaccine Confidence and Misinformation on Friday, January 8, from 10:00 to 11:00 a.m. EST for the second in a series of conversations about building trust in Covid-19 vaccines in the United States. The event will focus on the panel’s second recommendation from its recent Call to Action, proposing a campaign to better reach diverse and underserved populations with vaccines and other health and social services support, by integrating the delivery of Covid-19 vaccines into a broader platform of services.

The session will feature Denise Gray-Felder, Founding President and CEO of the Communication for Social Change Consortium; LaQuandra Nesbitt, Director of the District of Columbia Department of Health; and Umair Shah, Secretary of Health for the Washington State Department of Health, to discuss how better messaging and sustained communications and outreach could help to reach communities of concern. Panel Co-Chair Heidi J. Larson, Professor of Anthropology, Risk, and Decision Science and Director of the Vaccine Confidence Project™ at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, will host and moderate. Katherine E. Bliss, Senior Fellow with the CSIS Global Health Policy Center, will offer brief framing remarks, and J. Stephen Morrison, Panel Co-Chair, Senior Vice President, and Director of the CSIS Global Health Policy Center, will also join as a discussant. ...