Professor Kenneth Hartigan-Go is an adjunct faculty member at the Asian Institute of Management with vast expertise and research interest in the fields of Medicine, Health Systems and Governance, Pharmacovigilance, Toxicology, and Regulatory Disciplines. Together with his fellow researchers Ronald U. Mendoza, PhD, Madeleine Mae A. Ong, MD, and Jurek K. Yap, MSc from the Ateneo De Manila University and Ateneo School of Medicine and Public Health, they have published a research paper on COVID-19 hesitancy in the ASEAN region, entitled “COVID 19 Vaccine Hesitancy in ASEAN: Insights from a Multi-wave Survey Database from July 2020 to March 2021”.
According to their research, there have been early studies on COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy with varied intensity across countries. This hesitancy was linked to various factors, such as socio-economic conditions, information sources, issues of trust in government, scientific experts, and the health sector.
Their study evaluated the determinants of vaccine hesitancy in the ASEAN region to gain insights into the strategies that may be successful in designing communications and campaigns for an enhanced vaccination uptake. The result of their study highlights the significance of a targeted vaccine education and research campaign. Furthermore, their study calls for streamlining communications campaigns towards messages that promote vaccine uptake in the region, while better targeting those groups most vulnerable guided by the empirical findings.
Read on for the full transcript of Prof. Ken and his co-researchers publication as published in the University of the Philippines-Manila – Acta Medica Philippina through this link.
