Evaluating the impact of a linguistically and culturally tailored social media ad campaign on COVID-19 vaccine uptake among indigenous populations in Guatemala: a pre/post design intervention study

Abstract

ObjectivesTo evaluate the impact of culturally and linguistically tailored informational videos delivered via social media campaigns on COVID-19 vaccine uptake in Indigenous Maya communities in Guatemala.MethodsOur team designed a series of videos utilising community input and evaluated the impact using a pre–post intervention design. In-person preintervention surveys were collected from a sample of respondents in four rural municipalities in Guatemala in March 2022. Facebook, Instagram and browser ads were flooded with COVID-19 vaccine informational videos in Spanish, Kaqchikel and Kiche for 3 weeks. Postintervention surveys were conducted by telephone among the same participants in April 2022. Logistic regression models were used to estimate the OR of COVID-19 vaccine uptake following exposure to the intervention videos.ResultsPreintervention and postintervention surveys were collected from 1572 participants. The median age was 28 years; 63% (N=998) identified as women, and 36% spoke an Indigenous Mayan language. Twenty-one per cent of participants (N=327) reported watching the intervention content on social media. At baseline, 89% (N=1402) of participants reported having at least one COVID-19 vaccine, compared with 97% (N=1507) in the follow-up. Those who reported watching the videos had 1.78 times the odds (95% CI 1.14 to 2.77) of getting vaccinated after watching the videos compared with those who did not see the videos when adjusted by age, community, sex and language.ConclusionOur findings suggest that culturally and linguistically tailored videos addressing COVID-19 vaccine misinformation deployed over social media can increase vaccinations in a rural, indigenous population in Guatemala, implying that social media content can influence vaccination uptake. Providing accurate, culturally sensitive information in local languages from trusted sources may help increase vaccine uptake in historically marginalised populations.

Education increases COVID-19 vaccine uptake among people in Canadian federal prisons in a prospective randomized controlled trial: The EDUCATE study

“…First, our study was conducted in four of 43 Canadian federal correctional facilities where all incarcerated people were male, thereby decreasing the generalizability of our results to other correctional institutions or to those who house women. That said, gender has not been found to predict vaccine uptake in prior studies utilizing educational interventions [13] , [33] , [34] . Second, we made the assumption that the reasons for vaccine refusal identified during prior qualitative research conducted among this population [9] , [12] were generalizable to the entire federal incarcerated population.…”

COVID-19 vaccine uptake and barriers among Indigenous language speakers in Mexico: Results from a nationally representative survey

“…In Canada, for example, rates of vaccination among First Nations, Inuit, and Métis in Toronto and London were lower than in the general population [ 35 ]. Similarly, in Guatemala, vaccination rates have been low in high-risk Indigenous populations, and municipalities with a higher proportion of Indigenous people have experienced lower vaccine rates [ 36 , 37 ]. In Colombia, one year after the initiation of COVID-19 vaccination, only 36.7% of the Indigenous population had been vaccinated (WHO), and in Brazil, vaccination coverage was 26% lower among Indigenous people when compared to the overall population [ 38 , 39 ].…”

“…The study’s findings underscore the need for timely and inclusive vaccination campaigns that involve Indigenous communities in the planning and implementation process, emphasizing the importance of disseminating accurate and accessible information in Indigenous languages. Examples of such interventions have been successful in other countries, like Guatemala and India [ 36 , 37 ]. Misinformation and lack of culturally appropriate information can hinder vaccination efforts.…”

Keep our mob safe

“…Scholarship on COVID-19 communication is growing. Studies focused on social media outreach to Indigenous populations provide limited discussion of multilingualism and multimodality (Menton et al 2021;Patten et al 2022), although some note that local languages, humour and culturally resonant community role models increase engagement (Miguel et al 2022;Weeks et al 2022). In the Australian context, research on Indigenous language use in COVID-19 health promotion primarily focuses on availability, format and community engagement (Gaborit, Robinson and Sutherland 2022;Glennie, et al 2022;Heinrichs, Kretzer and Davis 2022).…”