Working with community groups to understand and reduce COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy among ethnic minority individuals in the UK

The UK Government's COVID-19 vaccine delivery plan of 11th Jan 2021 emphasised the need for high uptake of the vaccine but acknowledged hesitancy among some ethnic minority groups. Recent work has confirmed the unwillingness and/or uncertainty among some ethnic minority groups to take the COVID-19 vaccine. Our own work has revealed that many people in ethnic minority groups believe the vaccines to be unsafe (linked to the speed of development and deep mistrust of medical research and pharmaceutical companies), are unsure that vaccine trials have involved people like them (and therefore whether effectiveness and safety data apply to them), all against a backdrop of social inequalities. Deliberate misinformation campaigns, some of which target ethnic minority communities, play into existing anxieties.

The impact of this was starkly demonstrated by the OpenSAFELY Collaborative- data from 23.4 million adults in England show much lower rates of vaccination among Black, Mixed, South Asian and Other ethnic groups than for White groups. By 13th January, 42.5% of over-80s who were not in care homes and were White had been vaccinated, compared to 33.8% of over-80s of Indian/British Indian heritage, 23.0% of those of Bangladeshi/British Bangladeshi heritage, and 15.9% of those of African heritage.

The UK's national COVID-19 vaccine implementation strategy is clearly less effective for non-White ethnic groups. Uncertainty about receiving a vaccine presents significant challenges to achieving the societal coverage that government public health advisors have recommended.

Our proposed work will a) bring together 8-10 ethnic minority community organisations, all of which want to improve vaccine uptake in their communities; b) in collaboration with these groups do rapid systematic reviews on uptake of vaccines among ethnic minority groups and of strategies to improve uptake; c) prepare a co-produced, evidence-informed report containing recommendations regarding vaccine roll-out to ethnic minority groups, together with a co-developed agenda for further research to understand vaccine hesitancy.

Ethnic minority community organisations are at the heart of our proposal. They have the networks, experience, and credibility to engage their communities in health programmes and research. Harnessing this experience to corroborate and refine insights from different sources of evidence and tailor any resulting recommendations to the communities they represent is critical to improving COVID-19 vaccine uptake.