Katie Attwell, Tauel Harper and Chris Blyth
This blog post is based on the Evidence & Policy article, ‘Facilitating knowledge transfer during Australia’s COVID-19 vaccine rollout: an examination of ‘Functional Dialogues’ as an approach to bridge the evidence–policy gap’.
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, we wanted to use our skills to help with the eventual vaccine rollout. Chris was already well-placed to do so. As Chair of Australia’s Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (ATAGI), he had years of experience in aspects of vaccine policymaking. Katie was an emerging leader in vaccination social science and policy, and, like Chris, she had strong connections in the Western Australian Department of Health. They knew that the team focused on administering Australia’s National Immunisation Program would have their hands full with supporting the existing programme during COVID-19 times. How could they also prepare for a pandemic vaccine rollout?
Katie put together an interdisciplinary team to help, bringing in Chris as co-lead. They recruited Tauel for his communications expertise. Other researchers were chosen for their skills in qualitative research, law and health policy, and the Coronavax project was born. Its key aim was to gather qualitative data from the community about their information needs and attitudes towards COVID-19 vaccines and vaccination programmes. Although funding was difficult to secure initially, the project was eventually supported by through a competitive grant from the Wesfarmers Centre of Vaccines and Infectious Diseases at The Kids Research Institute Australia, along with the Department of Health and the state government, including a competitive grant from the Future Health Research and Innovation fund.
Katie and Tauel developed the idea of Functional Dialogues to include in the project. We sought to ensure that our research would have timely impact, and also as a way of defraying the risks involved in the project by ensuring some external scrutiny and inputs over our research projects and their immunisation policy. This led to the recruitment of Jordan Tchilingirian for his expertise on deliberative governance methods.
The basic idea of a Functional Dialogue was as follows. Researchers normally translate findings to policymakers once they have published their data. This kind of timeframe could not work for a project that was supposed to support the vaccine rollout. The prevalence of social media meant that sentiment about COVID and the vaccines would be available in real time, whereas academic publishing took months, if not years. Moreover, while the vaccines weren’t invented yet, we knew that governments would roll them out quickly once they were. The team needed to get findings from the community studies to government immediately.
At the same time, the researchers were in the difficult position of trying to ascertain what the government vaccination policy and process was likely to be. These processes were being developed and were being affected by political issues at federal and state level. While Chris and Katie could witness decision making processes at the federal level through ATAGI, the implementation of policy and communication strategy at state and federal levels remained somewhat opaque. We knew that it would be invaluable to our research design to be able to hear what was known and unknown at the government level, and what their intended strategies would be.
Here, Katie drew on behavioural insights. Researchers are tenacious in collecting data. With three political scientists on the team, the pandemic presented an unparalleled opportunity to collect data about pandemic policymaking. A commitment to collecting data in the meetings would also help the researchers to ensure that they happened, despite the punishing workloads that the pandemic was creating for all concerned. While the crisis was in place, we could share information with each other, in order to promote best practice for both us and the government; once the crisis was over, the team could analyse the impact of that process. Katie and Tauel worked with Jordan to develop a methodology whereby data would be both presented and collected through regular facilitated meetings. These meetings were Functional Dialogues.
We held 14 Functional Dialogues with representatives from the Western Australian and federal governments. During each dialogue, we presented findings from our qualitative interviews and social media monitoring. We then discussed the implications with our government partners. Were they hearing what we were telling them from other sources? How were they making decisions about the vaccine rollout? How were they managing communications in light of what we were sharing about community sentiment? Then, the researchers recorded ourselves debriefing afterwards. What had we learned? What ideas did we have? How might we tailor our research to meet emergent demands? Our Evidence & Policy paper arose from our experience in developing Functional Dialogues. The process grew from the opportunity to integrate government partners into our project and to share our findings in real-time. While proving the specific effects of the Functional Dialogues remains a vexed issue, Western Australia achieved high vaccine coverage rates and relatively few COVID deaths. We hope that ultimately, we played a role in our state and country’s successful management of the vaccination rollout.
Image credit: Photo by Joshua Hoehne on Unsplash
Katie Attwell
Associate Professor Katie Attwell is a political science and public policy scholar at the University of Western Australia, and a global expert in vaccine hesitancy and vaccination policies for childhood and COVID-19 vaccines. Katie led the interdisciplinary West Australian project ‘Coronavax: Preparing Community and Government’, which engaged in community and government research for a vaccine roll-out for COVID-19. She currently leads ‘MandEval: Mandate Evaluation’, exploring COVID-19 vaccine mandates and their impact in Australia, Italy, France, California and the United Kingdom. A/Prof Attwell has published in Nature, Pediatrics, Milbank Quarterly, and Social Science and Medicine. With her team, she researches vaccination policymaking in Australia, the United States, the United Kingdom, Italy, France, Bangladesh, Vietnam and Malaysia.
Tauel Harper
Tauel Harper is an Associate Professor of Communication at Murdoch University. His research focuses on the interplay of technology and communication in the public sphere.
Chris Blyth
Professor Chris Blyth is a paediatrician, microbiologist and vaccine researcher at the University of Western Australia, Kids Research Institute Australia and Perth Children’s Hospital. His research focuses on evidence to inform immunisation policy, ranging for determining burden of disease and risk factors of vaccine preventable diseases, assessing vaccine efficacy, effectiveness and safety, and strategies to improve vaccine schedules, coverage and confidence. His research have resulted in substantial changes in influenza, pneumococcus, COVID-19 and RSV policy, both in Australia and in numerous low- middle income countries.
Read the original research in Evidence & Policy:
Attwell, K. Harper, T. Carlson, S. J. Tchilingirian, J. Westphal, D. & Blyth, C. C. (2024). Facilitating knowledge transfer during Australia’s COVID-19 vaccine rollout: an examination of ‘Functional Dialogues’ as an approach to bridge the evidence–policy gap. Evidence & Policy, DOI: 10.1332/17442648Y2024D000000038. OPEN ACCESS
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