Vaccine hesitancy in ethnic minority communities

Early in February 2021, a number of anecdotal reports were shared with the Lancashire Resilience Forum (LRF) BAME cell that ethnic minority communities in Lancashire and South Cumbria were Covid-19 vaccine hesitant, and this was impacting on vaccine uptake in those communities. Some of the challenges included reports of false information being shared in communities, low levels of trust in official information sources, and a lack of information in community languages.

Following this, measures were put in place to increase understanding and confidence in the vaccine which included local community leaders being filmed having their Covid-19 vaccinations, vaccination clinics in mosques in areas of low vaccine uptake, increased engagement with systematically marginalised communities e.g. Gypsy, Romany and Irish Travellers, Black Afro-Caribbean, Chinese, refugee and asylum seeker communities, and a three-month independent research project looking at the factors behind vaccine hesitancy in ethnic minority communities.