Delving into vaccine hesitancy through multicentre studies: VAX-TRUST and INF-ACT projects' insights

Abstract Vaccine hesitancy is a wide and varied phenomenon and represents a challenge for healthcare professionals (HCPs), who may encounter obstacles in building trusting relationships with parents and patients. Depicting the multifaceted aspects of hesitancy and finding effective tools that could help HCPs in addressing this issue are major public health priorities. This presentation will provide insights about two multicentre research initiatives that aim to respond to these needs. The “VAX-TRUST - Addressing Vaccine Hesitancy in Europe” project (funding from European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under Grant Agreement No. 965280) involves several institutions across Finland, Belgium, Poland, the Czech Republic, Italy, Portugal, and the UK. One of the goals of VAX-TRUST is to assist HCPs in dealing with hesitancy by implementing tailored interventions, specific for each target region. The process of development of interventions, starting from data supporting the planning up to the final intervention framework, will be discussed. The INF-ACT project (Next Generation EU funding within the MUR PNRR Extended Partnership initiative on Emerging Infectious Diseases, Project no. PE00000007) is a multicentre collaboration including universities and institutions throughout Italy. Within this project, the EPI-MOD node will contribute to realize novel monitoring methods to gather information on human behaviours during outbreaks and evaluate vaccine hesitancy levels and determinants. Among the main objectives, EPI-MOD will examine features and applications of immunization registries and will delve into vaccine hesitancy through a broad Italian nationwide survey, profiling subgroups of population at high risk for vaccine hesitancy. Overall, the results of these two large projects will allow to integrate novel data into information for action by identifying interventions that could be used to support HCPs and vulnerable groups that may require additional attention.