Public Health mining its data to identify and tackle pockets of vaccine hesitancy

Public Health is mining its data to better identify demographic and geographic pockets in the region where vaccination rates are lower. They will then be targeting those areas with specific efforts to get more people vaccinated.

Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph Public Health has had an outreach program on the go for several weeks to help address vaccine awareness, hesitancy and misinformation. Now it will be “digging deeper” into the data to see what can be done to increase the vaccine rate even further, said Public Health spokesperson Danny Williamson.

That’s being done throughout June.

“Our data team is really cracking into ‘who is not vaccinated?'" Williamson said.

They are looking “to really understand who those pockets are,” then start "honing-in" on those pockets with targeted messaging and advertising.

“We want to make sure they’ve got all the information they need and are getting it in places and ways that are meaningful to them.”

Public Health is also looking at what, if any, barriers there are in those pockets, be it awareness, language or perhaps clinic times.

Williamson said not everyone is going to get vaccinated, “but there’s certainly no reason that as a region we can’t aim for 80, 85 or 90 per cent. It really is possible. We obviously want to push it as far as we can.”

He said Public Health has been “doing a ton” of outreach to groups and organizations.

“We know Public Health is not the gatekeeper on all this stuff, right? People have conversations with their seniors’ group, their families, their co-workers, with their soccer club. So we are arming those groups — city and county staff, libraries, Rotary clubs, chambers of commerce — so that they can have the conversations.

“This is kind of an all-hands on deck project,” Williamson said, adding that part of tackling vaccine hesitancy includes arming as many “champions” in the community as possible with the knowledge, language and information.

“We know some people are going to be convinced by Public Health messaging, we know that some people will be convinced if the federal government comes out and says ‘you have to have two vaccines to travel.’ Different things are going to motivate people.

“If we can get that next 10 or 15 per cent and get into the 80s and the 90s then we’re really talking about getting to that idea of that herd immunity and really protecting folks.”