Get offline to get people vaccinated

The challenge

Our client was a sexual health clinic that had received an unrestricted grant from a pharma company to support their outreach programme, which focuses on the bars and clubs in the city’s gay district. The clinic wanted to use it drive hepatitis B vaccination during summer months, where typically there is a dip in vaccination numbers. They approached Curious Health to ask if we can help with creating leaflets. Well, we thought, we’re sure we can do more than that.

Our approach

We set about understanding why uptake dipped during the summer months. The usual reasons for vaccine hesitancy were still there, but our hypothesis was that people were away over the summer. Our team went to the clinic to speak to their clients and quickly established that while people weren’t planning on going ‘away, away’, their socialising habits shifted during summer. People tended to socialise more locally, rather than trek into a hot city, but the revelation was identifying that they spent their money on summer festivals and gigs.

So, we asked the clinic, ‘how painful would the risk assessment be for taking vaccinations on tour’? They were up for the challenge, and we hatched a plan that would see the team at Pride and summer festivals, armed with accessible materials and an onsite vaccination clinic.

The results

With Pride acting as an awareness generator, we set up the vaccination clinic at two festivals with high attendance from men who have sex with men. Over these two days the clinic operated, the sexual health clinic vaccinated 140 people. A further 220 signed up to receive information from the clinic and 2,500 leaflets about hepatitis B vaccination were distributed across the three events.

What this shows

Sometimes providing accessible, co-created materials aren’t enough. You also need to provide people with the opportunity to take immediate action. Classic behavioural science. Going to where your audience physically is, makes the difference between awareness and action.

Want to meet your audience where they are? We’ve got our face glitter and tent at the ready.