Vaccine Resource Hub - An example process for effectively connecting community-based organizations to supporting resources

Background: Vaccines save lives and can prevent or reduce the severity of many infectious diseases and their consequences. However, adult vaccination coverage remains low nationally and significant racial and ethnic disparities exist, leaving thousands of Americans unprotected.

Program background: Under the extensive Partnering for Vaccine Equity program, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is providing funding and support to national, state, local and community-level partners, who are prioritizing equity in vaccination access among those groups experiencing disparities in immunization—including racial and ethnic minority groups, individuals living with disabilities, rural communities, older adults, individuals with chronic conditions, and more. This Vaccine Resource Hub is part of that effort.

Evaluation Methods and Results: The content management team for the Vaccine Resource Hub (VRH) structured a process to collect, review, describe, and promote resources to support community-based organizations (CBOs) and others throughout the nation who are working to increase vaccine uptake in their communities, with a particular focus on groups experiencing disparities in immunization. The process includes titling and describing the resources (over 1,300 currently available) to connect the CBOs with the resources to support their multifaceted community campaigns - campaigns that typically combine social media strategies with fact sheets, videos, and flyers. VRH content also supports them with capacity-building resources on how to counter misinformation and conduct successful events and campaigns. A communications specialist has been a key addition to the team and used a Facebook page and other strategies to successfully expand the reach of the VRH.

Conclusions: Attention to refreshing and adding content monthly as well as continuous learning from our experience promoting the resources has helped grow the users, downloads, and page views of the VRH materials, with page views currently over 20,000 per month (January - March 2023).

Implications for research and/or practice: We provide a model for managing an equity-focused resource hub (collecting, reviewing, describing, and promoting) that others can borrow or imitate to support other objectives.