On 22 November 2021, RIVER-EU partners held a bilateral meeting with the JITSUVAX project consortium to get to know each other’s work better and find a meaningful way to collaborate. JITSUVAX is a four-year Horizon 2020 research project launched in April 2021, which aims to leverage misinformation about vaccinations into an opportunity by training Health Care Professionals (HCPs) through inoculation and refutational learning, thereby neutralizing misinformation among HCPs and enabling them to communicate more effectively with patients.
To date, JITSUVAX have produced the following outputs:
- Taxonomy of fallacious arguments against vaccination. JITSUVAX developed a hierarchical taxonomy of anti-vaccination arguments identifying common and recurring themes. The team carried out a systematic literature review and thematic analysis of antivaccination arguments, and grouped them into eleven attitudinal roots that explain why an individual might express opposition to vaccination. The taxonomy serves as a starting point to link expressed opposition of vaccines to their attitudinal roots. This will enable the future development of targeted rebuttals that address the anti-vaccination argumentation.
- Gender and cultural sensitivity plan. JITSUVAX provides an overview of prior research on the relationships between vaccine uptake and gender, ethnicity, and religion, followed by general guidelines on how to address these variables in research.
Some other relevant materials produced by the JITSUVAX consortium partners
- COVID-19 Vaccination Communication Handbook: A practical guide for improving vaccine communication and fighting misinformation. The tool contains an underlying wiki that is constantly updated.
During the meeting, both project coordinators presented their respective projects, current and upcoming activities. It was clear that continued collaboration is mutually beneficial and further exchanges will be organised in the near future.