A training session was developed as part of a wider work programme called Leaving No One Behind, a local multiagency response to reducing vaccine inequalities. Through a range of different vaccine offers and alternative models, this has increased uptake in the communities where uptake has been lowest.
The development of a cascade training model, delivered to key influential and trusted local stakeholders who in turn could impart the information within local communities, became the preferred solution to addressing these interwoven issues. This would also compliment other strands of work being developed or delivered to tackle the impact of COVID-19-19 in Leeds. The target was to ensure anyone working with communities at ground level would have access to the latest intelligence and research on the vaccine.
Want to Know More session on COVID-19
The ‘Want to Know More’ sessions (WTKM) are a familiar brief training offer typically provided by public health specialists and accessed by the wider public health workforce across the city. Networks are in place to distribute the offer city-wide, however, targeted advertising of the COVID-19 training session was promoted among key community stakeholders.
The training covered scientific information about COVID-19, associated health inequalities and the latest research and information on the vaccines and a brief guide to using the Making Every Contact Count (MECC) principles for initiating conversations. An Infection, Prevention and Control nurse from Leeds Community Healthcare Trust delivered the section about the COVID-19 vaccine. Bringing not only expertise, but additional credibility to the training. The section covered elements which were identified in the insight sessions that people wanted to know about and included what’s in the vaccine, how it was developed, vaccine effectiveness and potential side effects. They were also there to answer any questions raised by participants.
Training distribution
Community based stakeholders are typically part of the Leeds vibrant and proactive voluntary and community sector and are very familiar and trusted in the diverse communities of Leeds. There was implicit understanding of the importance the messenger, not just the message as an underpinning principle to this strand of work. Explicitly the crucial difference of having a familiar and trusted person sharing impartial and factual information, sometimes translated into a community language as opposed to national government messages and information.
Initial targeting sought those working with people and communities most at risk in the city – those areas of high poverty (defined as the 10 per cent most deprived in the country), older people and communities with large proportions of Black and minority ethnic groups. As this work developed and promotion through word of mouth increased the demand for the training session, a distribution list was developed to track delivery and identify gaps in training provision. This matrix included all known COVID-19 vulnerabilities - ethnic groups, age, poverty, locality, faith groups and the extremely clinically vulnerable.