Module B: Gather Data

Purpose

This module helps you base your work on existing data and what you already know. Taking time here is essential to create a strong, evidence-based strategy. Let’s get started!

What You’ll Achieve

By the end of this module, you will:

1. Understand immunization data and gaps.
2. Identify the areas and people your strategy will focus on.
3. Learn about perceptions or barriers to immunization in your target communities.
4. Define a clear immunization objective for your strategy.
5. Review existing plans or strategies that support immunization demand.

What You Need

• Data Presentation
• Initial Insights:Data Cards
• Data Worksheet

Activity #1: Collect & Record Data

What is data?

Data is information like vaccination rates, field reports, or surveys about immunization. Using this information will help you understand the reasons people don’t vaccinate, find gaps in the data, and make a plan based on evidence.

This activity can be done alone or as a group. Involve people who know the most about immunization data or who have been involved in past research.

Collect existing data and plans

Start by understanding the current situation in your area. Here’s what to look for:

• Immunization coverage: iIdentify the number of non-immunized (zero-dose) and underimmunized individuals. Pay attention to:
  • Low DTP1 coverage: This might suggest vaccine hesitancy or inaccessible services.
  • Dropout between DTP1 and DTP3: This may suggest that families face challenges like poor access, bad experiences, or hesitancy.
• Existing immunization plans or strategies:
  • Find past or current plans to improve vaccination.
  • Note their focus areas, challenges, and solutions.
• Reasons for non- or under-vaccination: look for data and reports that show why people aren’t getting vaccinated, including:
  • Quantitative research: Data from surveys like Knowledge, Attitudes, and Practices (KAP) surveys, BeSD studies, MICS, or DHS.
  • Qualitative research: Data from interviews, community reports, or observations about immunization beliefs and behaviours.
  • Observations: Information from local health workers or first-hand experiences.
• Strategies and programme reports: look at government or organisation plans to see their goals and targets. Check reports from past immunization programmes to learn what worked, what didn’t, and what lessons were learned.
• Other data sources: be sure to look at relevant data such as:
  • Disease surveillance data: Records about diseases from monitoring systems.
  • Health service utilisation data: Data on how often people are using health services.
  • Legislation: Relevant laws or policies related to immunisation and the population groups in question.
  • Reports from national and international organisations: Recommendations from organisations like WHO, UNICEF, or Gavi.
  • Budgeting data: Details on how resources are used and any gaps in funding.

If you can’t find data about vaccination coverage, move straight to Activity 2 in this Module.

Document your key findings

You can do this exercise with your core team either online on a call, or in-person by printing the cards and worksheet.

Now that you’ve collected the data, it’s time to summarise the most important information. This will guide your strategy and help your team remember what you’ve learned.

• Use the Initial Insights Cards: Data Cards to review the data you collected. The cards include prompts to help you categorise existing data about immunization in your context.

To use the cards:

• Review the cards: Look through the prompts on each card to identify the types of data.
• Match your data: Compare the prompts to your collected data and organise it into the data categories.
• Document your data: With your team, talk about what you found and write the key points for each category on the Data Worksheet. Think about what is the most important information to inform your strategy.
• Keep the worksheet nearby—it will help in the next activity when you analyse the data.
  
• NOTE: It’s optional to document data and findings in this way. You can also use your own methods to take note of what data is most important to consider in your context.

Activity #2: Priority Locations and Immunization Objective

To build a strategy that truly meets the needs of high-risk communities, start by identifying which communities/groups and locations in your context have the lowest immunization rates. It is recommended to do this as a group with your core team—include other decision-makers if needed.

⚠️ This activity is critical to ensure you have a focused strategy. You will validate this with participants in Workshop #1. Do not skip this step.

Identify locations and priority communities

Using the data you reviewed, answer two questions:

Locations

Which areas have the lowest immunization coverage or highest risk zero-dose or underimmunized children? Where will your demand strategy focus?

• List specific places like high-risk towns, cities, conflict zones, or remote areas with the highest rates of underimmunized or zero-dose children.
• Write down the province, town, or local area.
• Your Immunization Demand Strategy should be subnational, so you need to define the specific underimmunized areas it will focus on, rather than the entire country or large region.

Priority Communities

Who are the groups or communities that are zero-dose or underimmunized? Who could the strategy focus on helping the most?

• Discuss as a team, then write down the top three to five highest risk communities or groups the strategy should focus on.
• It’s important to select a few priority communities or groups so that the solutions to increase immunization are focused on the needs of the highest risk underimmunized groups. For the rest of the demand strategy process, you will identify barriers, collect data, and develop solutions specific to these groups.
• Example groups may include a particular marginalised community or ethnic minority, or a particular pastoralist tribe, or perhaps a migrant and mobile population. Where possible, name the specific group to ensure that the strategy is focused on the highest risk communities. For example, you may describe a priority group in Pakistan as Pashtun community members living in urban slums within the South Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. The idea is to be as specific as possible to who the target group is.
• If helpful, refer to the Prompt Cards: Who for some inspiration around who the priority groups in your community may be!

If you’re missing information, write it in the “Data Gaps” section of your workbook.

❗IMPORTANT: In Workshop 1, you will share these priority locations and communities with workshop participants to ensure your plan focuses on the right areas and people. Ensure you’ve defined these so they can be validated in the workshop.

ℹ️ REMINDER: Look at the plans or strategies you found in Activity 1. See if they already have defined the priority communities or locations to focus on, and use that to help with your decisions. If there are any underimmunized communities that have been missed out of past strategies or plans, consider including them.

Define your immunization objective

• Decide on the main problem your strategy will address. For example:
  • “Reduce drop-out of under-vaccinated children for routine immunization in Killa Abdullah, Balochistan, Pakistan.”
  • “Increase immunization coverage of zero-dose children for the polio vaccine in Kano, Northern Nigeria.”
• Use this sentence formula to draft the overall objective for your strategy. This should be one or two statements that are the focus of the whole strategy:
  • [“Reduce drop-out” OR “Increase immunization coverage”] of [“zero-dose children” OR “underimmunized children”] for [e.g. “routine immunization services”] in [e.g. “X town/local area, X province, X country”]
• If your strategy has different immunization problems in different locations, you can create more than one objective, but aim for no more than two or three. You’ll confirm your objective(s) in Workshop 1 with workshop participants.

Get ready to share and validate your data with participants in Workshop #1

In Workshop 1, you will validate the priority locations, communities, and your immunization objective with workshop participants to see if they agree that these are the areas of focus for the strategy. You need to summarise the key data and decisions made and put them into a format you can share with participants in the room.

• Open the Data Presentation
• Review your Data Worksheet, then summarise in the data presentation:
  • The key data findings e.g. immunization coverage data and behavioural data
  • One to three priority subnational locations
  • Three to five priority communities or groups found in those locations
  • The immunization programme objective
• For the workshop: If you don’t have access to a projector or screen, print the data presentation for participants to review.
• If you do not wish to use the Data Presentation, use your own way to document the priority locations, communities, and immunization programme objectives in a way that will be easy for you to share with workshop participants during Workshop 1.
• Do not miss this step, as you will need to validate the priority focus areas with participants in Workshop 1.

✅ Wrapping Up

Congratulations on finishing Module B! Before starting Module C: Invite Participants, make sure all steps and activities in this module are completed. In particular, ensure you have filled in the Data Presentation or Worksheet with key decisions on your priority locations and communities.