The START team worked with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s (BMGF) Vaccine Delivery (VxDel) team to develop an understanding of opportunities for their work to reflect a growing gender equity focus across the Foundation by conducting a literature review and developing hypotheses for potential further exploration.
The VxDel team at BMGF is in the beginning phases of integrating a gender equity focus into their work to reflect its growing emphasis across the Foundation. It is well-known that (1) maternal education is associated with increased vaccination rates and that (2) at an aggregate level, boys and girls are vaccinated equally. There are, however, opportunities for the VxDel to better understand the various influencers of vaccination from a gendered perspective both in terms of the sex of the child and in terms of gender issues among caretakers. The START Team was engaged to conduct a literature review, to frame thinking around these issues, and to present findings to the VxDel Team in order to facilitate conversation and create a foundational understanding of themes associated with gender and vaccination. The START Team ultimately adopted the Social Ecological Model from a health systems-specific perspective in order to organize hypotheses and thinking. The project was conducted in five phases:
- Conduct a literature review (databases used: Web of Science, Google Scholar)
- Develop a framework to organize thinking
- Surface themes and develop hypotheses
- Identify gaps and opportunities
- Present findings to the VxDel Team during a Data & Ideas Lab; facilitate discussion
Final deliverables included:
- PowerPoint presentation covering literature review findings, framework and hypotheses
- Hypothesis guide to illustrate how the literature informed thinking
Literature “warehouse” as a baseline for further exploration
