“Communicate to vaccinate”: the development of a taxonomy of communication interventions to improve routine childhood vaccination

Natalie Willis, Sophie Hill, Jessica Kaufman, Simon Lewin, John Kis-Rigo, Sara Bensaude De Castro Freire, Xavier Bosch-Capblanch, Claire Glenton, Vivian Lin, Priscilla Robinson, Charles S Wiysonge

Vaccination is a cost-effective public health measure and is central to the Millennium Development Goal of reducing child mortality. However, childhood vaccination coverage remains sub-optimal in many settings. While communication is a key feature of vaccination programmes, we are not aware of any comprehensive approach to organising the broad range of communication interventions that can be delivered to parents and communities to improve vaccination coverage. Developing a classification system (taxonomy) organised into conceptually similar categories will aid in: understanding the relationships between different types of communication interventions; facilitating conceptual mapping of these interventions; clarifying the key purposes and features of interventions to aid implementation and evaluation; and identifying areas where evidence is strong and where there are gaps. This paper reports on the development of the 'Communicate to vaccinate' taxonomy.