The Voices on Vax Campaign: Lessons Learned from Engaging Youth to Promote COVID Vaccination.

BACKGROUND

The Voices on Vax campaign was a collaborative effort that engaged youth to create an interactive website and social media presence to increase COVID vaccine confidence and uptake among African American families in Baltimore, Maryland.

OBJECTIVES

To describe lessons learned and offer recommendations for future health communication campaigns involving youth ambassadors and virtual platforms.

METHODS

We collected website analytics and limited data from pop-up surveys on the Voices on Vax website, as well as reflections from the youth ambassadors about their experiences.

LESSONS LEARNED

Challenges included difficulties engaging the priority population and methodological limitations of our campaign's impact evaluation. Successes included our focus on youth and adaptive engagement strategies.

CONCLUSIONS

We recommend using techniques to maximize engagement by the priority population, conducting in-person outreach, incorporating mixed methods data collection, and providing a mix of structured training and creative freedom to youth ambassadors.