Living Systematic Review of COVID-19 Vaccination - Policies, Health and Care Workforce Behaviour and Requirements to Cover a Target population

Abstract Background: The COVID-19 revealed a vacuum of knowledge on health workforce requirements to conduct vaccination campaigns on the massive scale required by the pandemic. The health workforce represents both a priority target group for COVID-19 vaccination, and also a central element of health systems’ capacity to deliver it to the wider population. With new evidence being produced almost daily we plan a living systematic review to answer four different, yet complementary, review questions that encompass workforce requirements for COVID-19 vaccination of the target population; productivity and performance of vaccination teams; barriers and enablers for COVID-19 vaccination of health workers; prioritization of health workers as key target population; COVID-19 vaccination coverage among health and care workers; policy and regulation of mandatory vaccination of health and care workers. Objective: To gather, analyze, classify, prioritize, and report through living systematic reviews of the literature to collate evidence on priority policy areas that may guide health workforce monitoring, impact assessment and normative guidance in the context of COVID-19 pandemic vaccination. Methods The living systematic review (LSR) will include quantitative, qualitative and mixed methods studies.The databases to be searched include MEDLINE - PubMed, Embase, SCOPUS, Web of Science,Latin American and Caribbean Health Sciences Literature. In addition, grey literature to be searched will include WHO’s COVID-19 and Google Scholar. The review will search relevant records published between 2019 and March,2022. The LSR will be reported according to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines.