Deadline: 17-Aug-21
The Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health, Office of Infectious Disease and HIV/AIDS Policy (OIDP) announces the availability of funds for Fiscal Year (FY) 2021 for Promoting Vaccine Confidence in Local Communities through Partnership with Regional Health Offices.
OIDP oversees the National Vaccine Program that provides strategic leadership and coordination of vaccine and immunization activities among federal agencies and other stakeholders with the goal to help reduce the burden of preventable infectious disease.
OIDP has maintained that vaccine confidence is critical to improving vaccination coverage rates and has prioritized its work on strengthening public trust in vaccines.
This initiative seeks to expand traditional immunization partnerships to plan, implement, and evaluate evidence-based practices and develop novel approaches to increase confidence in vaccines in local communities, particularly partnerships with minority-serving or other advocacy organizations that work with populations with low vaccination rates (e.g., African Americans and residents in rural communities).
Objectives
This project centers around building partnerships with community stakeholders to increase confidence in the use of vaccines by the public, healthcare providers, and policymakers, especially in communities that have lower vaccination coverage rates.
Its objectives are:
- identify a local community with low vaccination coverage rates and lagging confidence in vaccines, characterize the community, determine causes for the lack of vaccine confidence, and the magnitude of the problem;
- plan and implement targeted interventions in the community designed to increase confidence in vaccines and the community’s willingness to be vaccinated;
- evaluate the intervention qualitatively and with quantitative measures (e.g., changes in numbers or percentages of vaccines administered compared to baseline), determine the value added by the intervention, and, if appropriate, recommend how the intervention should be used in other similar communities to increase vaccine confidence.
Funding Information
- Estimated Federal Funds Available: $750,000
- Anticipated Number of Awards: 6-8
- Award Ceiling (Federal Funds including indirect costs): $125,000 per budget period
- Estimated Period of Performance: Not to exceed 3 years
- Anticipated Initial Budget Period Length: 12 months
Outcomes
- Short-term outcomes may include:
- Identified and engaged collaborators; convened and managed a consortium of stakeholders.
- Conducted needs assessments in local communities.
- Identified vaccine confidence issues and challenges (confidence with the product, the provider, and the policy) in local communities.
- Developed locally-tailored intervention plans to increase vaccine confidence in target populations and evaluation plans to track progress, including the baseline for outcome measures.
- Implemented prioritized intervention activities.
- Intermediate-term outcomes may include:
- Tracked systematic, target community-specific qualitative and quantitative data to monitor effectiveness of implemented activities.
- Developed and implemented standards by which activities may be expanded, modified, or discontinued after the activity has started.
- Conducted interim evaluations and generated interim summary reports with recommendations for the remainder of the project period.
- Documented qualitative and quantitative changes in levels of confidence in vaccines (by product, provider, and policy) in targeted populations or communities, and recommendations for additional intervention activities or research.
- Long-term outcomes may include:
- Confidence in the product, i.e., vaccines, is increased.
- Confidence in the provider, i.e., physicians, nurses, pharmacists, and other vaccination service providers including those in private practice, healthcare systems, community health centers, public health, and retail outlets, is increased.
- Confidence in the policy, e.g., recommended vaccination schedule, coverage for vaccines in health plans, and availability of “free” vaccines based on income, is increased.
- Increased vaccine confidence becomes a routine part of community vaccination programs, particularly those that target minority, medically vulnerable, and hard-to-reach populations.
- A greater degree of collaboration among health and other stakeholders to improve vaccine confidence in the community.
Eligibility Criteria
- Any public or private entity located in a state or territory (which includes one of the 50 states in the United States, District of Columbia, Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, U.S. Virgin Islands, Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, American Samoa, Guam, Republic of Palau, Federated States of Micronesia, and the Republic of the Marshall Islands) is eligible to apply for an award under this announcement.
- State and local governments, faith-based organizations and American Indian/Alaska Native/Native American (AI/AN/NA) organizations are eligible to apply.
For more information, visit https://www.grants.gov/web/grants/view-opportunity.html?oppId=332874