ECDC training in the area of vaccination and vaccine hesitancy for primary healthcare professionals

Vaccine hesitancy is increasingly a topic of concern, and empowering health professionals to deal with this public health threat is vitally needed. Health professionals, working at the primary healthcare (PHC) level (physicians, nurses, community workers, etc.) are at the frontline of interaction with those that are taking decisions around vaccination such as parents, adolescents and care takers. Some of these also serve as trainers for their peers.

Public health (PH) professionals and some PHC professionals are involved in, or responsible for vaccine preventable diseases at national and sub-national levels, and may be involved in training, or in designing training curricula for the PHC professionals on increasing vaccination acceptance. Although these professionals have a background knowledge and skills on vaccines and immunisation, they would benefit from:

a) updating their knowledge and

b) strengthening their skills to deal with vaccine hesitancy, including Covid-19 related vaccine hesitancy, in order to train PHC professionals. This implies developing skills to train in the areas of:

• understanding the mechanisms of hesitant behaviours,
• effective communications that caregivers and other health professionals might use when talking to patients,
• identifying the most powerful tools to engage with caregivers and others that are ambivalent towards vaccination in order to support and motivate them to change their behaviour and vaccinate.

In the framework of the Council Recommendation on vaccination, ECDC has been asked to support Member States (MS) with training, including Training of Trainers (TOT) in the area of immunisation, vaccine hesitancy and communication around vaccination. Moreover, ECDC received requests for support from Member States in the same area of work.

Therefore, ECDC has contracted with the Association of Schools of Public Health in the European Region (ASPHER) and a consortium of ASPHER Members to design a competency-based e-learning course on vaccinology and a competency-based blended training course on behaviour change communication about vaccine hesitancy.

The e-learning course will be available on the ECDC Virtual Academy (EVA) and will be accessible freely both at the national and sub-national level. The target audience is public health and primary health care (PHC) professionals.

The face to face course will have the training of trainer (TOT) format and will be delivered at the national level. The target audience are public health (PH) or PHC professionals having a

training mission or mandate. The nationally trained trainers will then cascade down the knowledge as part of the Member States contribution to this project.