Global Vaccine Equity Initiative

Complex Problems, Interdisciplinary Solutions

The challenges of ensuring equitable access to vaccines are pervasive and complex. Potential solutions must address not only the science of developing vaccines but the policies, economic factors, and social structures that relate to vaccine financing, production, distribution, access, and hesitancy.

To develop new approaches to the significant health, financial, and geopolitical costs of inequitable access to vaccines around the world, the Center recently awarded $1.9M to two international research teams. Read more about these projects and other vaccine-related research below.

Digital Vaccine Cards

$1.1 million

An interdisciplinary team of researchers from the African Population and Health Research Center and U-M has co-designed an ambitious project to promote vaccine equity in Kenya and Uganda. They are focusing on:

  • High-quality data that allows providers, health facilities, and governments to quickly identify and respond to gaps in coverage.
  • Reliable tools that allow parents and caregivers to better access vaccines for their children in a timely manner.

Read more about the project and the research team in Next-Generation Vaccine Cards: New Technology for Improved Equity in East Africa.

Vaccine Researchers Gershim Asiki and Martin Mutua in front of the African Population and Health Research Center in Nairobi, Kenya

Trusted Faces, Familiar Places

$826,700

An interdisciplinary team of researchers from the Universitas Syiah Kuala and the University of Michigan has co-designed a robust project to promote vaccine equity and uptake in Indonesia. They are focusing on:

  • Offering a novel, sustainable model for future vaccination campaigns in which vaccines are a visible part of everyday community life.
  • Community outreach in unusual locations to reinforce the importance of vaccination.

Read more about the project in Making Vaccination “Easy” in Indonesia with Trusted Faces and Familiar Places.

Maulid Feast, Aceh Province, Indonesia, Daniel Birchok, University of Michigan-Flint

Despite significant advances in global childhood vaccination, immunization rates in many parts of the world remain insufficient. Vaccine disparities are particularly evident in low- and middle-income countries, where coverage against diphtheria, pertussis, and tetanus—a key indicator of access to routine vaccination services—falls below 50% in many regions. Coverage gaps have been further widened by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Read about Vaccine Equity Research by Center Members

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

Barriers to vaccine distribution and utilization in LMICs include:

  • inadequate health facilities and local public health infrastructure,
  • unreliable vaccine supply, storage, and transport capabilities,
  • and lack of health care provider and/or proxy availability and training. 

Behavioral and social drivers of vaccination are similarly important and include perceived disease risk, vaccine confidence, and social norms.

A mother walks down the street of an urban informal settlement in Nairobi, Kenya

Advancing Equity with Interdisciplinary Research

The Center launched the U-M Global Vaccine Equity Initiative by hosting the Global Vaccine Equity Ideas in 2022. This innovative event convened 26 researchers and 8 faculty advisors from 13 academic units across the university—including all 3 campuses.

These facilitated discussions led to an array of novel, solution-oriented projects to increase vaccine equity globally, including in the following areas:

  • Public policies, social structures, and education that relate to vaccine access and vaccine hesitancy
  • Technical aspects of vaccine development and delivery—manufacturing, quality, supply chains
  • Economic and financial aspects of vaccine development and distribution
  • Relationships between vaccinations and various health outcomes
  • Sociodemographic predictors of vaccination
  • Spatial distribution of vaccination at varying levels of resolution

Read about the Global Vaccine Equity Ideas Lab

Inside view of an empty refrigerator storage truck, part of the cold supply chain. Thermostability | business | economics