McCarthy Ruth Nana Efua, Donkoh Emmanuel Timmy, Arthur Dominic DeGraft, Dassah Edward Tieru, Boadu Kwame Ofori, Otoo John Ekow, Boadu Ivy Wina Ofori, Gyasi Samuel Fosu
Department of History and Political Studies, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, Ghana.
Screen and Treat Research Group, Center for Research in Applied Biology, School of Sciences, University of Energy and Natural Resources, UENR, P. O. Box 214, Sunyani, Ghana.
Trop Med Health. 2023 May 12;51(1):26. doi: 10.1186/s41182-023-00519-7.
Strategies for developing and advancing good public relations can be recognized in nearly all fields of life without making an exception for the healthcare industry. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, matters of public health have gathered more force. The importance of effective public relations for improving healthcare is highlighted by the position that immediate access to reliable health information should be the hallmark of a just society. However, the strategies available for addressing major threats to the uptake of public health services such as mass vaccination campaigns are not properly studied and documented in the Ghanaian context. This organizational case study explored strategies used by healthcare professionals working with the Ghana Health Service (GHS) to address COVID-19-related vaccine hesitancy in the country.
We performed a qualitative inquiry with semi-structured in-depth interviews conducted with 25 public health officials of the GHS. The interviews were timed to coincide with the mass deployment of COVID-19 vaccines in four Regions. Participants were recruited through purposive sampling. Data collected included demographic characteristics, perspectives on public relations strategies used in the past year to improve COVID-19 vaccine uptake as well as successes and pitfalls. Thematic analysis was performed with NVIVO software to generate themes from interview transcripts.
Four main themes emerged from the data analysis and these are presented. Healthcare workers perceived vaccine hesitancy to be a threat with the potential to undermine an important strategic organizational goal related to COVID-19 illness. In terms of PR strategies, we determined that a combination of informative, motivational, persuasive and coercive public relations strategies was employed by the Ghana Health Service to address the challenge of vaccine hesitancy. We further found that PR strategies were deployed across both traditional (print, radio, TV) and emerging/social media networks. Officials were optimistic that the strategies would produce results, but were uncertain whether they could attribute current successes or failures to the PR strategies used.
Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, public relations strategies which have been employed by the Ghana Health Service to address vaccine hesitancy are characterized and catalogued. The nature of the audience and PR strategies employed suggests that the effect of these strategies may be short-lived unless they are constantly reinforced by the GHS. These findings show that effective PR strategies exist for addressing vaccine hesitancy in public health practice.
在生活的几乎所有领域都能认识到制定和推进良好公共关系的策略，医疗行业也不例外。在新冠疫情之后，公共卫生事务的影响力更大了。有效公共关系对于改善医疗保健的重要性体现在这样一种观点上，即即时获取可靠的健康信息应成为公正社会的标志。然而，在加纳的背景下，针对大规模疫苗接种运动等公共卫生服务推广面临的重大威胁所采用的策略，尚未得到充分研究和记录。本组织案例研究探讨了加纳卫生服务局（GHS）的医护人员为应对该国与新冠疫情相关的疫苗犹豫问题所采用的策略。
我们对GHS的25名公共卫生官员进行了半结构化深度访谈，开展了定性调查。访谈时间与四个地区大规模部署新冠疫苗的时间相吻合。通过目的抽样招募参与者。收集的数据包括人口统计学特征、对过去一年用于提高新冠疫苗接种率的公共关系策略的看法以及成功经验和失误之处。使用NVIVO软件进行主题分析，从访谈记录中生成主题。
数据分析得出了四个主要主题，现予以呈现。医护人员认为疫苗犹豫是一种威胁，有可能破坏与新冠疾病相关的一项重要战略组织目标。在公共关系策略方面，我们确定加纳卫生服务局采用了信息性、激励性、说服性和强制性公共关系策略相结合的方式来应对疫苗犹豫的挑战。我们还发现，公共关系策略在传统（印刷、广播、电视）和新兴/社交媒体网络上都有部署。官员们乐观地认为这些策略会产生效果，但不确定能否将当前的成功或失败归因于所采用的公共关系策略。
自新冠疫情爆发以来，加纳卫生服务局为应对疫苗犹豫所采用的公共关系策略得到了描述和分类。受众的性质和所采用的公共关系策略表明，除非得到GHS的持续强化，否则这些策略的效果可能是短暂的。这些发现表明，在公共卫生实践中存在有效的公共关系策略来应对疫苗犹豫问题。
