An independent global research fund was established to support a better understanding of the relationship between social media and confidence in the COVID-19 and routine vaccinations. On June 10th, leaders from the technology, healthcare, global development, and academic sectors have come together to announce the Alliance for Advancing Health Online, a new initiative to advance public understanding of how social media and behavioral sciences can be leveraged to improve the health of communities around the world. The Alliance will bring together Bay Area Global Health Alliance, the CDC Foundation, Facebook, the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy, MSD, Sabin Vaccine Institute, the Vaccine Confidence Project at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, the World Bank, and the World Health Organization. This multi-year initiative will initially focus on addressing vaccine hesitancy and vaccine equity with a strong focus on historically excluded or marginalized communities. In addition, the Alliance intends to create a global network of centers of social media and health research focused on improving health behavior via online platforms. As part of the broader initiative, the first step is the establishment of an independent Vaccine Confidence Fund to support research on how social media and online platforms can be leveraged to best support confidence in and uptake of COVID-19 and routine vaccinations around the world. The goal of this initial research is to produce timely, practical applications, focused on historically excluded or marginalized communities globally. 

The Vaccine Confidence Fund will also provide grants to researchers and organizations that are exploring how to best use social media and digital platforms to understand and address vaccine hesitancy in order to help build confidence in vaccines. Proposals are due by August 6, 2021. More information on the Alliance can be found here.