Community-led vaccine strategies to boost COVID-19 vaccine uptake among racialized immigrant groups in Parc...

This qualitative research, using Parc Extension, Quebec, Canada, as a case study, aims to describe what structural barriers affected access to COVID-19 vaccine information and services, and how were these addressed through community-led initiatives.

Qualitative description (QD) methodology was used to gather detailed accounts of the experiences of residents and community organizers living and working in Parc Extension. These accounts were analysed to identify the community-led initiatives that helped address vaccine hesitancy and improve vaccine uptake. A total of 50 participants, including residents and organizers, were recruited and interviewed. Inductive and deductive thematic analyses were applied, with line-by-line coding to extract key themes.

Participants identified several structural barriers to vaccination faced by the Parc Extension community, including language barriers, accessibility issues, and a lack of trust in both the vaccine and government health measures. In response, several community-led initiatives were developed to address these challenges. The strategies implemented were grounded in evidence from behavioural and social science research and included mobile and pop-up vaccination clinics, faith-based initiatives, street outreach efforts, and culturally relevant and multilingual health communication campaigns.

Our findings show that vaccine hesitancy cannot be understood or addressed solely at the level of individual attitudes, but is shaped by structural barriers to access, including inequitable service delivery and exclusionary systems. By demonstrating the effectiveness of community-led, locally grounded strategies, this work underscores the need for governments and public health systems to move beyond individual-level messaging and prioritize access, equity, and structural change in both routine and emergency vaccination efforts.