INTRODUCTION
To maximise the protective benefits of COVID-19 vaccines, national vaccination deployment will need to reach as many as possible. Failure to address the known and emerging gender-related inequities during the largest global vaccine deployment in history will delay vaccination coverage. This brief includes a guidance note and checklist of key actions for countries to prioritise that align with the core domains of WHO and UNICEF’s guidance for COVID-19 national deployment and vaccination plans.
Download the Vaccine Deployment Checklist Infographic here.
Maximising the Protective Benefits of COVID-19 Vaccines
To maximise the protective benefits of COVID-19 vaccines, national vaccination deployment will need to reach as many women, men, and gender-diverse people in the most equitable, efficient, and effective way possible. This requires action on the gender-related barriers and inequities that negatively affect access to health services and information.
Addressing Gendered Barriers
For instance, women tend to face limited mobility to reach health facilities or vaccination sites, limited decision-making power in their health-seeking, and limited access to health resources, including evidence-based information on vaccine safety (especially among pregnant and lactating women). In many settings, women and gender-diverse groups are also at risk of experiencing sexual harassment, exploitation, disrespect, and other forms of gender-based violence when seeking health services, including vaccination.
Impacts of Not Taking a Gendered Approach
Failure to address the known and emerging gender-related inequities during the largest global vaccine deployment in history will delay vaccination coverage, add to COVID-19 morbidity and mortality and to its burden on health systems. This will further delay national economic recovery efforts and countries’ ability to build back better.
GUIDANCE NOTE
Overview
The Gender Equality Working group of the SDG3 Global Action Plan on Healthy Living and Well-being, along with the Gender and Health Hub at UNU-IIGH, presents a guidance note and checklist of key actions for countries to prioritise that align with the core domains of WHO and UNICEF’s guidance for COVID-19 national deployment and vaccination plans.
These steps cover planning, delivery, and monitoring phases in vaccine deployment and include:
- The meaningful involvement of gender experts and community representatives in planning, decision-making, identifying barriers, communicating information, building trust, and vaccinating the population.
- Vaccine delivery and logistical planning based on context-driven knowledge of women, men, and gender-diverse groups’ health-seeking preferences. This includes community or workplace-based delivery, addressing travel or mobility challenges to access vaccination sites, employing women vaccinators for social acceptability in communities with gender segregation, and ensuring women vaccinators are safe, well remunerated, and receive adequate training.
- Evidence-based messaging using culturally sensitive and inclusive mediums to share evidence, dispel myths, misinformation, and uncertainty, and support vaccination uptake. This can be achieved through co-creating tailored messaging with stakeholders and leveraging diverse communication channels and networks to reach different sub-groups.
- Data systems that collect, report, and use sex-disaggregated vaccine outcomes in decision-making, such as in vaccine regulatory approval processes, vaccine safety surveillance, and outreach monitoring.
These recommendations apply to national stakeholders in both COVAX-supported and self-financing countries, including ministry of health officials, civil society, health workers, employer and trade unions, religious and traditional leaders, the private sector, gender experts, representatives of women, gender-diverse people, and people with intersecting marginalised status.
Implementation Strategies
Tactical strategies for implementation emphasised in the guidance note include accountability, adherence to human rights, iterative planning and responsiveness to new evidence and real-world lessons, and collaboration with a broad range of stakeholders—including women’s, ethnic and indigenous organisations, and community-based groups—to draw on their lived knowledge, experience, and trust-relationships in deployment planning and implementation.
Access Guidance Note in English
