Human-Centred Design for Tailoring Immunization Programmes

"The strength of the process is in the engagement of stakeholders, particularly end-users at each stage. It supports local ownership, transparency and accountability, and enhances programmes' ability to listen and learn to better understand community perspectives."

Because the drivers of vaccination are contextual, assessing and addressing low uptake requires engaging with communities to generate insights on their needs and perspectives. These insights can then guide the development of better-quality vaccination services, systems, policies, and strategies. Developed through a collaborative and iterative process by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), this document is intended to support human-centred and tailored strategies to reach under-vaccinated communities.

The guide leverages UNICEF's Human Centred Design 4 Health (HCD) and WHO's Tailoring Immunization Programmes (TIP) to create a consolidated and simplified strategy for evidence-based co-design suited to low-resource settings: HCD-TIP. The draft HCD-TIP approach was piloted as a workshop with the UNICEF East Asia and Pacific Regional Office and the WHO regional offices for South-East Asia and the Western Pacific in June 2021.

Through a series of steps detailed in each of 4 stages - Diagnose, Design, Implement, and Evaluate - this guide outlines a cyclic process to overcome hurdles to vaccination. Guided by the WHO's behavioural and social drivers (BeSD) framework (see Related Summaries, below), the process is designed to be people focused, community centred, applicable to immunisation across life stages and all public health campaigns, and adaptable to new situations, such as emerging needs during emergencies. The HCD-TIP approach can be used by anyone in the health and immunisation system at a national or subnational level to engage communities in co-designing services that better serve their needs.

Users of this guide are encouraged to jump back and forth between stages, visiting material relevant to their needs. Throughout, sections of tips deemed "Good enough" highlight easy-to-take actions at each stage. The idea is that the HCD-TIP approach does not need to be time and resource intensive: "Anyone can do it - start today!" To that end, the 8 annexes in the document offer examples and tools for practitioners, such as the HCD-TIP End-User Persona Template and the HCD-TIP Field Test Results Sheet.