To celebrate World Immunisation Week (24-30 April), we compiled the top 10 most popular Linked-produced resources from last year to help you identify the strategies, good practices, lessons, and country experiences that will lead to greater resilience, equity, and sustainability for your national immunisation programme. Learn more about clearing immunisation backlogs, overcoming barriers to introduce and scale the HPV vaccine, implementing effective strategies for performance management and continuous learning, transitioning from paper-based to electronic immunisation registry systems, and more below!
Workshop & Brief: Clearing Immunisation Backlogs & Building Back Better in the Wake of COVID-19: 10 Key Takeaways from the Linked Asia Pacific Workshop
Stakeholders from Bhutan, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Philippines, Sri Lanka, and Vietnam came together for a Linked workshop to discuss the primary stressors to immunisation programs during the COVID-19 pandemic, successful mitigation strategies, and promising practices to clear immunisation backlogs that have built up over the last two years while continuing to provide routine immunisation services. Other countries can adapt the good practices and country experiences shared during this workshop to ensure that children are not missed out with vaccines and immunisation services. Learn more through the workshop materials, including presentations and country posters, here. We also outlined 10 promising strategies, good practices, and lessons learned that emerged from the workshop in a companion brief here.
Workshop & Brief: New Vaccine Introduction in Middle Income Countries – Overcoming Barriers to Introduce and Scale the HPV Vaccine
A Linked workshop brought together participants from Mongolia, Philippines, Tunisia, and Viet Nam to exchange experiences related to barriers, lessons, and strategies to introduce and scale-up the HPV vaccine. The exchange identified key steps and drivers of successful HPV vaccine introduction and their tradeoffs and implications for sustainable financing to support countries’ decision making. Stakeholders can use the country experiences summarized in the workshop materials here to understand barriers and lessons learned to introduce and scale-up the HPV vaccine, as well as key strategies to overcome those barriers, and uncover actionable insights from the workshop in the key takeaways brief here.
Practitioner Perspective: How Armenia uses its engagement with Linked to strengthen its immunisation programme
Linked sat down with Gayane Sahakyan, Armenia’s Deputy General Director of the National Center for Disease Control and National Immunisation Program Manager, to discuss how Armenia’s participation in Linked activities contributed to efforts to strengthen its immunisation programme. Curious to know how learnings from a regional Linked workshop have improved Armenia’s performance management and monitoring of health workers and strengthened their capacities to provide immunisation services? Find out in our Practitioner Perspectives blog here.
Blog: Does Pay for Performance Work to Improve Immunisation Coverage?
Pay for Performance (P4P) is a financing mechanism that has flourished in recent years as countries look for innovative ways to improve coverage of health services. P4P can be employed as an approach to incentivize health care providers to improve service delivery outcomes. As policymakers in Georgia considered P4P as an approach to address primary health care (PHC) challenges, they commissioned a review of the existing evidence in the literature to inform policy discussions. The findings of that review are summarized in our blog here.
Practitioner Perspective: The Sri Lankan Experience of Effective Management and Supportive Supervision of EPI Delivery
During a Linked study tour in which Indonesia and Viet Nam visited Sri Lanka to explore the role of effective performance management and supportive supervision in improving the delivery of Expanded Programme on Immunisation (EPI) services, Dr. Thejaka Siriwardena, Ministry of Health, Sri Lanka, sat down with immunisation experts, Dr. Nguyen Thi Thu Huong, National Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology, Viet Nam, and Junghans Sitorus, Ministry of Health, Indonesia, to learn about the rich lessons and strategies that emerged from the study tour. Discover the insights in a Practitioner Perspectives video here.
Workshop: Strengthening Human Resource Capacity and Performance Management
Multiple factors influence the performance of health workers in improving immunisation programming, and motivation has been frequently cited by many Linked countries as a critical area for improvement. Country immunisation stakeholders from Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Moldova, Uzbekistan, and Ukraine, as well as global experts, exchanged workable strategies, approaches, good practices, and lessons learned to foster a continuous learning environment and ensure the uptake of new knowledge from countries’ formal training and capacity building efforts. Examine the workshop presentations and country posters on our website here.
Blog: Combating Vaccine Hesitancy through Storytelling: Four Key Insights on the Power of this Persuasive Approach
The stories told in two video case studies produced in partnership with Common Thread detail the immunisation journeys of young mothers Cha and Do through short films that can be used for health worker capacity building as an exemplary model of how to engage with vulnerable communities. Stories are one of the most effective communication techniques to build understanding of complex issues and change behavior. Our blog outlines four key insights on the power of the persuasive approach of storytelling to combat vaccine hesitancy. Explore them here.
Learning Engagement: Benefits and Implementation Considerations for Electronic Immunisation Registries (EIRs)
Ten Linked countries across the Europe Asia and Asia Pacific regions participated in a virtual learning exchange, hosted by the Institute for Health Policy (IHP), focused on increasing awareness and understanding of what Electronic Immunisation Registries (EIRs) are and their potential benefits to routine immunisation programs. Speakers from Australia, Viet Nam, and Bhutan discussed their countries’ experiences with EIRs and shared lessons that can inform other countries’ adoption of EIRs. Review the recording and presentation materials here.
Linked Middle-Income Country Dashboards
Our former Gavi country dashboards that help middle-income countries track their progress toward strong immunisation programme performance using up-to-date evidence released from WUENIC, WHO/UNICEF Joint Reporting Form on Immunisation (JRF), and other sources, are updated every year. We encourage you to examine the dashboards of your network peers, which include key indicators around coverage, equity, financing, and new vaccine introductions, and identify countries with successes or those facing similar challenges as your country which you would like to discuss. Explore the dashboards here.
Workshop: Strengthening the Delivery of Immunisation Services through PHC Platforms
Stakeholders from the Europe-Central Asia region – Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Moldova, Mongolia, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan – came together in Tbilisi, Georgia, to share experiences, mitigating strategies, and good practices to address challenges related to integrated immunisation and primary health care services, with the objective of strengthening service delivery to maintain, increase, or restore immunisation coverage levels. Access all the workshop presentations and materials on the Linked website here or a key takeaways blog that summarizes the workshop learnings here.