COVID-19 Vaccinations
Youth Voice and Participation: Developing and Enhancing the COVID-19 Vaccination Programme
Young Healthwatch have been working hard over the past seven months on investigating COVID-19 vaccinations and the success of the vaccination service for children and young people in East Sussex.
Young Healthwatch staff and a core group of young volunteers set out to investigate the following priorities, which were co-designed by our young people:
Engagement activity within the project was focused upon the following enquiry topics, coproduced with young volunteers and HWES staff:
The Vaccination Service
• How has the overall quality of care been for young people when they’ve received their jabs, including staff, facilities and aftercare?
• How effective has current communications and marketing been, and what could be done to make vaccination promotional materials more accessible and appropriate for youth audiences?
Wider Impacts and Uptake
• What are young people’s motivations for getting vaccinated against COVID-19?
• What barriers, anxieties and worries could prevent an eligible young person from being vaccinated against COVID-19?
• What strategies could be suitable to increase vaccination uptake in youth communities?
• How has the pandemic impacted children and young people’s health, and to what extent is being vaccinated rectifying negative impacts?
Our engagement activities
We led a variety of youth engagement activities to capture and champion the voices of young people within the theme of COVID-19 jabs, including:
- Deliberative Engagement conversations through visits to two vaccination clinics to gain in-depth insight from young patients on experiences, perspectives and issues
- A Pan-Sussex survey to gain a broader sense of feedback that young patients have on the programme as well as their wider experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic in relation to their health and wellness
- Coproduction work with a group of local young volunteers to gain in-depth recommendations and guidance for place-based, youth-proofed solutions to increasing vaccine uptake among youth communities
Our Findings and Recommendations
To read our full report including out findings and recommendations for integrated care, local services, vaccinators, youth workers and educational workers, and communications and engagement practitioners here.
You can also read our Summary Document, which outlines our recommendations for developing the COVID-19 Vaccination programme for children and young people in East Sussex, here.
