Data Harmonization and Vaccine Hesitancy

Global health data is being collected at an unprecedented rate. But too often, that data is fragmented and siloed.

The ability to integrate and harmonize different types of data can provide important insights into the health equity challenges of our time.

The Center for Global Health Equity’s Data Collaborative is building the infrastructure necessary to enable the integration and harmonization of data from different sources and on different scales. The Center’s first demonstration project leverages some of the world’s best data archiving and cataloging services in the social sciences to pilot a data acquisition, data organization, and data analysis project around the theme of vaccine hesitancy.

How can data integration help us understand vaccine hesitancy?

Vaccine hesitancy occurs for many reasons and leads to reductions in vaccination coverage for families and communities, which can lead to outbreaks of vaccine-preventable disease.

Many of the factors that influence vaccine hesitancy are related healthcare access—and both hesitancy and access are related to the social determinants of health unique in each LMIC setting.

If we can understand more fully the social determinants of health that affect access and hesitancy, we can increase vaccine uptake and reduce the burden of the vaccine-preventable diseases in LMICs.

Street market scene in Bandung City, Indonesia

Project Partners

Sub-National Data Archive System for Social and Behavioral Data (SUNGEO). Aims to relieve bottlenecks in research by integrating multiple sources of sub-national data in a common data repository. Repository is designed with a user-friendly web interface, offers an open-source software package, and provides an archiving tool that allows users to contribute original data to the repository.
Center for Political Studies (CPS). Brings rigorous data analysis to bear on issues surrounding the integrity of democratic institutions, the role of media in society and government, and citizen perception of information in civil discourse.
Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR). International consortium of 750+ academic institutions and research organizations. Provides leadership and training in data access, curation, and methods of analysis in the social sciences.

AKU PRECISE Network researcher, Mariakani Hospital, Kaloleni, Kenya. Broadly-based group of research scientists and health advocates working to investigate placental disorders in sub-Saharan Africa

A researcher with Aga Khan University's PRECISE Network at Mariakani Hospital, Kaloleni, Kenya

Better Health Solutions from Disparate Data Sets

The Center's first demonstration project provides World Bank Group survey data from four LMICs—Ethiopia, Malawi, Kenya, and Indonesia—in a coordinated, searchable interface. Combining data collected at different times from across geographies—family, local, regional, national—allows researchers to more quickly and accurately answer research questions and develop potential health interventions.

By comparing a variety of social, sociopolitical, demographic, and climate data, teams can identify previously overlooked or misunderstood barriers to vaccination and new opportunities for increasing vaccine uptake. Analyses include data on:

Climate and weather
Demographics—including ethnicity, migration patterns, population densities
Election results and political violence
Economic development—including living standards, health financing, and transportation infrastructure
Topography

Mammalian specimens from the University of Michigan collection used—among other things—to help researchers understand host-parasite relationships and vector-borne disease cycles.

The ability to integrate different types of data provides insight into issues of vaccine hesitancy. When data are merged at common scales, researchers can explore and test hypotheses about drivers of vaccine hesitancy that we do not yet fully understand.

Vaccine equity is a signature initiative of the Center for Global Health Equity. These in-depth analyses of factors related to vaccine hesitancy at a global and interdisciplinary level will help advance the Center’s goals of improving access to vaccines and increasing vaccine uptake.

Kenya health official going over tuberculosis data with a Center Impact Scholar