expert meeting workshop people with post-its and discussing during the workshop

Expert Meeting Underserved Groups

On the 11th of October, PDPC organized an interdisciplinary workshop with experts from social sciences, public health, virology, behavioural sciences and many more disciplines. Aim: to develop informed, tailored interventions for ‘underserved groups’ during pandemics.

What can we learn from the COVID-19 pandemic on how to reach underserved groups? What were the barriers and drivers to testing, vaccination uptake and adherence to prevention measures? What are the knowledge gaps? How can we remove these barriers? And what can we learn from the past to design more informed, tailored interventions in the future?

During this interactive afternoon with lots of in-depth and interactive discussions, we addressed the following topics:

  1. Created a common understanding of the steps in the WHO Tailoring Immunisation Approach (TIP) via discussions with @ Brett Craig, Technical Officer Vaccine Preventable Diseases and Immunization Programme of @ WHO Europe
  2. Reviewed the results of the situational analysis that was conducted by PDPC in house researcher @ Valérie Eijrond and project manager @ Nora Bünemann
  3. Reflected on the past and discussed the future in interactive workshops: what is needed to develop, test and evaluate informed, tailored interventions for disadvantaged groups?
  4. And last but not least…Developed actionable follow-up steps!

Some of the key lessons today were the need for an interdisciplinary approach and structural funding.

This is merely the starting point. We look forward to continuing working together with experts and stakeholders. The results of the situational analysis and today will be summarized and published in a report.