Behaviour change chatbot to encourage vaccine uptake
THE QUESTION
Can a chatbot improve the effectiveness and efficiency of vaccine uptake?
The Challenge
During the pandemic, millions of children around the world missed routine vaccines and other vulnerable groups, especially women and children, experienced reduced access to vital health/SRH services.
Traditional behaviour change communications interventions alone may not be sufficient to help with the catch up. There are often multiple barriers to people accessing health services and getting vaccinated - hesitancy may related to beliefs and attitudes, be influenced by social norms, or be practical barriers and knowledge gaps like not knowing where to go and when, complicated registration processes, lack of timely reminders or opportunity to ask questions or make changes to appointments, or learn more about relevant health issues. In addition, there is a need to build community resilience to future/multiple epidemics, pandemics or climate crises, where essential services could close, health seeking behaviours amongst the most vulnerable reduce, face to face contact with community health workers and frontline health professionals may not be possible, and the spread of mis/disinformation could affect peoples' decision making.
The Idea
Chatbots can go further than traditional communications interventions when trying to create behaviour change and maintain health services in crises. Chatbots can help by providing timely reminders, engaging in dialogue to challenge misconceptions, suggesting practical solutions (eg. drop pin for nearby clinics on map), and providing advice when face to face appointments unavailable. They can offer stronger response and retention rates than traditional online surveys and behavioural experiments and many popular cellular plans include unlimited Whatsapp usage, so chatbots can reach people at a lower cost compared to communication channels that require internet access.
This pilot plans to work with a country health team and a partner(s) with deep knowledge of behavioural science and application programming interfaces (APIs) to design and test a chatbot for Whatsapp or SMS to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of a vaccine uptake or other essential health/SRH behaviour change intervention in one country in East or West Africa where this has not yet been tried and where the need is greatest, for example areas with high levels of zero dose children - children who don’t receive a single dose of diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis-containing vaccine.
During the Coronavirus pandemic, millions of children around the world missed routine vaccines. I am embarking on a Frontier Technology pilot that will explore the question: Can a chatbot improve the effectiveness and efficiency of vaccine uptake?