Understanding COVID-19 vaccine thoughts and feelings to increase participation in a clinical study

  • The problem

    A research team struggled to enroll participants in the Central PA area for an National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded clinical trial for adults who had not yet received the COVID-19 vaccine.

  • Deliverables

    Execute a research plan to discover important areas to address in marketing and communications materials. Recommend channels to launch these messages that will capture attention and increase participation.

Stakeholders

  • NIH

  • Study team

  • Institutional Review Board

  • Marketing

  • Web developers

  • Product owners (owned and earned channels)

Audience

Adults 18 years and older who live within traveling distance to Hershey, PA, who have yet to receive the COVID-19 vaccine.

There are two types of participant groups. The first is healthy adults with no pre-existing conditions. The second group is adults with an allergic reaction in the past ten years.

  • Understanding

    The study team had zero participants, and the NIH funding depended on quick results. With a compressed timeline, we developed a research plan to properly evaluate the current vaccine landscape, identify critical areas of concern and inform effective channels.

  • Interviews

    Knowing the NIH had funded several sites across the country, I worked with our local study team to reach out to these other locations and see what challenges they were facing or successes they were having through semi-structured interviews. Low enrollment in this study was common across the board, leading us to pursue additional research to find a solution.

  • Literature review

    With COVID-19 being a new virus, there was limited literature on how to effectively communicate the vaccine. However, vaccinations have been around for decades, so I turned to publications related to the flu, polio and HPV to provide insight into successful vaccination messages.

  • Social listening

    I collaborated with product owners of our social media and email newsletter channels to collect data on common vaccine-related questions. We looked at posts and emails about vaccine news and announcements to give us a real-time status of our community’s perspective.

Analysis

One of the main themes that emerged from our social listening was a lack of trust among our community. Data from other vaccine literature showed similar findings, with insight on possible solutions to combat misinformation.

It was also clear that there were a lot of questions surrounding vaccine safety, allergic reactions and steps taken by vaccination sites in case of emergencies.

Both the healthy volunteer group and allergic reaction group had similar questions and concerns.

  • Design

    Our analysis gave us essential information to move forward with recommendations for content and channels. We collaborated as a cross-functional team to ensure compliance with NIH and regulatory, brand standards with marketing and scheduling with product teams.

  • Website

    With so many questions surrounding the vaccine and side effects, we decided to provide potential participants with a central digital hub for study information. I partnered with web developers to create the landing page that detailed study procedures and safety information that would be linked across all marketing and communications efforts.

  • Local media

    Literature showed that local media was a trusted source of medical information. With this in mind, I collaborated with the NIH and our internal marketing team to create a press release and pitch to local outlets.

    Additionally, the study lead joined a local television segment in a coveted morning spot to address some of the top questions and concerns about the vaccine. Using our research as a foundation, we ran through potential questions and correct framing of answers with the study lead prior to the live show.

  • Social media

    Due to large engagement with social posts related to the vaccine, I consulted with our social product owners to create a timeline, budget and content for a paid advertising campaign.

Testing

With the limited data available on COVID-19 vaccine messages, we conducted A/B testing on social media ads to inform future content and campaigns. We compared images, headlines and post text.

Results

The screenshot included here is the best-performing ad that encompasses other key findings such as:

  • Preference for real photos from the health system rather than stock photos. This is likely a continued theme of transparency and trust.

  • Featuring content that includes compensation and instructing folks to check out the study website.

  • Specific mention of the NIH’s involvement.

  • Using COVID-19 in the headline.

Impact

Findings from A/B testing were shared with additional study sites, as were copies of all marketing efforts such as the landing page and press release.

The campaign resulted in 50 inquiries and 17 enrollments in the first month alone, allowing the study team to stay funded and expand criteria to include children.