The Bob and June Prickett Churchill Fellowship to improve vaccine and risk communication to optimise COVID and routine vaccine acceptance and uptake

The global community faced an unprecedented challenge due to COVID-19. With vaccine hesitancy already nominated as one of the top 10 global health threats in 2019, extensive communication and engagement by public health departments was needed to achieve high uptake of COVID-19 vaccines. My mission was to visit leading global public health organisations, including WHO, UNICEF, CDC and Yale Institute of Global Health, to learn from world leading social and behavioural science and risk communication expertise and to apply this knowledge to inform COVID-19 and routine vaccine acceptance and uptake, work towards developing interventions to improve vaccine uptake and respond to vaccine misinformation in Australia and the Asia Pacific region.