Introducing Essential Resource Collection: Vaccinating High Priority Populations

Knowledge SUCCESS and the USAID COVID Response Team are excited to partner together in the curation of essential resources related to the COVID-19 vaccination of high priority populations.

Why We Created This Collection

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to unfold and evolve, updated guidance is needed to sustain momentum towards global vaccination goals. A key part of this effort includes the urgent delivery of vaccines to high priority populations.

In the WHO SAGE Roadmap for prioritizing uses of COVID-19 vaccines, the World Health Organization (WHO) defines high priority populations as:

• Older adults,
• Health workers, 
• Immunocompromised persons, 
• Adults with comorbidities, and
• Pregnant persons.

Vaccinating these priority populations is a first step in reducing severe disease and death, protecting health systems, and ensuring equitable vaccine access. Knowledge SUCCESS therefore used these WHO-outlined groupings of population as a guide for categorizing these essential resources, and chose several of these priority groups for this essential resource collection. We found that many of the resources overlapped with more than one population group, so we placed the resources in the most relevant category. 

This collection of essential resources supports countries, implementers, decision-makers, and development partners in coordinating the delivery of vaccines to high-priority populations. It gathers key learnings, insights, strategies, and tools from around the world to help vaccine professionals access trustworthy and timely information. This information can inform targeted service delivery strategies, health communication campaigns, advocacy efforts, and overall plans for vaccine rollout. With an eye to the future and the next global vaccination effort, we hope this guidance and evidence of what has worked for the COVID-19 vaccine can prove useful in a variety of health emergency contexts.

How We Chose the Resources

Knowledge SUCCESS and the USAID COVID Response Team curated this set of essential resources using the following criteria for selection:

• Evidence-based and trustworthy
• Recently published and relevant to the current COVID-19 landscape
• Applicable to different countries and settings

What is Included in This Collection?

This collection includes at least two resources per identified priority population, as well as general background information on updated global COVID-19 vaccination strategy and pandemic response. It provides tools and guidance to improve COVID-19 vaccine delivery and uptake. 

Resources are categorized by population and comprise a broad variety of resource types, including web applications, health communication materials, reports and studies, webinars, posters, technical guidance, databases, training modules, and articles.

Each resource in the collection includes a summary and a brief description of why it is considered essential. We hope this collection will be useful to you and look forward to receiving your thoughts and feedback.