Global Youth Vaccine Confidence Report 2021
The COVID-19 pandemic calls on all of us to work together to ensure and realize our collective health, safety, and wellbeing. This pandemic is not only a health crisis impacting hospitals and research laboratories, but it is also amplifying and exacerbating the inequities and injustices systematically marginalized communities and individuals experience. There is growing recognition of the importance of systemic interventions, communication, and community-based support and mobilization in “flattening the curve”, decreasing pressure and mitigating exposure to the harms experienced by frontline and essential workers, and saving lives. The decisions we make individually and as part of a collective not only impact our own wellbeing but that of our communities. What if these decisions were not informed by scientific evidence and instead shaped by disinformation, misinformation, and malinformation? What if the spread of the infodemic outpaces that of credible sources of information in communities? The spread of disinformation on vaccines is especially dangerous because it can decrease vaccine confidence and increase hesitancy. Lack of trust in and adherence to public health measures risks delaying resolutions to the pandemic.
The Global Youth Vaccine Trust project seeks to identify how youth around the world are making decisions about vaccinating against COVID-19. For that purpose, a survey was created in order to assess which factors and reasons contribute to individuals' decisions to take or not take the COVID-19 vaccine. Our survey was translated from English to Arabic, French, Japanese, Hindi, Mandarin, Persian/Farsi/Dari, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish.