Victoria

The Vaccine Champions Program started in Victoria to support the COVID-19 vaccine rollout in 2021, in partnership with the Victorian Department of Health.

Over 12 months, the program delivered nearly 100 sessions to over 10,000 attendees in Victoria. Training was provided for community leaders, faith leaders, government workers in transport, education, police, emergency management, union representatives, Aboriginal health and community groups, and workers in the disability sector and high-risk accommodation settings.

Sessions were tailored to be suitable for the attending audience. Over 80 Victorian attendees went on to become vaccine champions themselves and were empowered to deliver their own sessions to the community.

Fiji

The Victorian program has been adapted and extended to the Pacific region to support vaccine confidence and capacity building, which has been delivered in Fiji and Tonga. The program trains community leaders to become vaccine champions and advocate for vaccines in their community. The training is co-designed with community stakeholders, to ensure key country priorities are included.

The Vaccine Champion program in Fiji and was implemented in response to communication surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic, in collaboration with UNICEF Pacific, the Fiji Ministry of Health and Medical Services, the University of Sydney, and the University of New South Wales. The co-design workshop was held in Suva in June 2022 with 17 key stakeholders to identify gaps in Fiji’s COVID-19 and routine immunisation coverage, discuss and prioritise barriers to vaccination, and agree on the focus, features and participants for the training.

We trained 35 vaccine champions in Suva in July 2022, including community health workers, doctors, nurses, faith leaders, village headmen, public health students, Fiji Red Cross, Ministry of Health, Fiji Rugby and Cricket representatives. Most attendees were female (77 per cent) and half (49 per cent) had a health background. Most were from the Central Division (69 per cent), where the training was held, with the other 31 per cent made up of attendees from Eastern, Western and Northern Fiji. Vaccine champions delivered 54 discussion sessions about vaccines in their communities, reaching 1,717 attendees across Fiji.

Evaluation showed that vaccine champions do not need to have a health background to be engaged and successful. Training improved the trainees’ knowledge of effective communication skills and communication confidence, as well as community members’ intention to vaccinate.

Publications

• Jessica Kaufman, Isabella Overmars, James Fong, Jemesa Tudravu, Rachel Devi, Litiana Volavola, Luisa Vodonaivalu, Kylie Jenkins, Julie Leask, Holly Seale, Yasmin Mohamed, Kshitij Joshi, Halitesh Datt, Sonya Sagan, Michelle Dynes, Monsurul Hoq, Margie Danchin - Training health workers and community influencers to be Vaccine Champions: a mixed-methods RE-AIM evaluation: BMJ Global Health 2024;9:e015433.

Photo credit: Bruce Southwick

Image: A Vaccine Champion getting their COVID-19 booster vaccine in Fiji, 2022.

Image: Key stakeholders in Fiji at the codesign session, including those from the Ministry of Health, Ministry of Education, UNICEF, WHO, community groups and faith-based organisations, 2022. 

Tonga

The Vaccine Champions program in Tonga aimed to improve HPV vaccine confidence and demand by training health workers and community leaders to understand and effectively discuss vaccination, as well as address misinformation in the community. This work was done in partnership with the Tonga Ministry of Health, UNICEF Pacific, Tupou Tertiary Institute, the University of Sydney, and the University of New South Wales.

In March 2023, we held a co-design workshop in Nuku'alofa with 29 stakeholders from the Ministry of Health, Ministry of Education, Ministry of Internal Affairs, faith leaders, teachers, nurses, public health officers, UNICEF, WHO, Media Radio, Tonga Netball, National Broadcasting, National Youth Congress, Talita project, Attorney General Office, Outer Islands, Red Cross, and Tupou Tertiary Institute.

We trained 27 vaccine champions in Nuku'alofa, including teachers, nurses, faith leaders, district and town officers, people representing people living with disability, youth groups, sports groups, women’s groups, and Tonga Red Cross. Most were from Tongatapu (70 per cent), with representation also from the islands of Vava’u, Eua and Ha’apai. The training focused on the HPV vaccine for adolescent girls, routine childhood vaccines and vaccine communication skills.

Champions reached 1,138 community members in 57 vaccine discussion sessions. 

Findings

The findings from the evaluation of this work by Yasmin Mohamed.

Training health workers and community influencers to be Vaccine Champions: a mixed-methods RE-AIM evaluation, September 2024. BMJ Journals.

2025 Program

In 2025, the Tongan Ministry of Health requested another Vaccine Champions program rollout to support the HPV vaccination campaign. This program included an additional step of training Master Trainers, allowing sustainable continuation of the Vaccine Champions training locally. This work was done in collaboration with MCRI, the Tongan Ministry of Health and UNICEF Pacific.

In May 2025, we ran an implementation workshop to refine the Vaccine Champions Program and determine suitable participants. The workshop included 13 participants from UNICEF, Ministry of Health, Council of Churches, youth and women’s groups, and principals and teachers from primary schools.

In July 2025, we trained 12 nurses from Tongatapu, ‘Eua and Vava’u island groups to be Master Trainers over 2 days. Then, Master Trainers trained 21 Vaccine Champions, who were community leaders nominated by nurses in Tongatapu.

Between July and November 2025, Vaccine Champions ran 26 vaccine education sessions reaching over 500 community members. Since the completion of our program, the Minstry of Health have continued to run Vaccine Champions trainings and Champions have run more community sessions, to support the HPV vaccination campaign.

HPV vaccine promotion videos

MCRI partnered with the New Zealand digital design firm Bright Sundays to develop 11 videos for HPV vaccine promotion. The Bright Sunday team ran codesign sessions in Tonga with parents, children and health professionals to gather insights on what content and format would be best for the videos.

The videos can be viewed on the Tonga Ministry of Health YouTube channel below.

Tonga Ministry of Health YouTube Information Hub

Photo credit: Siekafa Media

Image: Training the Vaccine Champions in Tonga, 2023.

Image: Jess, training the Vaccine Champions in Tonga, 2023.

Vietnam

The Vaccine Champion program in Vietnam scaled up to a train-the-trainer approach, in partnership with UNICEF Vietnam, the Woolcock Institute, the University of Sydney and the University of New South Wales. Master trainers were recruited with expertise in vaccines and communication. In level 1, master trainers, alongside MCRI, trained health workers and communicators to become ‘provincial trainers’.

In level 2, provincial trainers trained community leaders to become vaccine champions and advocate for vaccines in their community groups.

In level 3, the vaccine champions hosted vaccine information sessions with community members, speaking about routine and COVID-19 vaccines and answering community questions.

The program was piloted in Điện Biên and Gia Lai in November 2022 with six master trainers, who trained 96 provincial trainers. Four newly trained provincial trainers trained 32 vaccine champions (25 per cent female), representing village health workers, village heads, teachers, women’s union and youth union representatives. Four newly trained vaccine champions ran vaccine information sessions in their communities in Pú Nhi, reaching 20 community members (25 per cent female). The pilot was evaluated using the RE-AIM framework, and changes were brought into the new program the following year.

The updated program was delivered in April 2023. Initially, a refresher training was held in Hanoi to re-train eight provincial trainers from the pilot held in Điện Biên and Gia Lai, using the new materials. Following this, 48 provincial trainers were trained in Sóc Trăng. Provincial trainers trained a total of 286 vaccine champions and champions reached 4,027 community members through community sessions.

UNICEF and the Ministry of Health have repurposed the vaccine champions to communicate information about other health issues. The training materials were also used to train journalists in Vietnam on how to communicate about vaccines.

Find out more about championing the vaccine cause in Vietnam

Image: Our team members, including Jess, Belle and Margie from MCRI, and our Master Trainers, translators and UNICEF colleges, at the Vaccine Champions Training in Soc Trang, Vietnam, 2023.

Image: The trained Vaccine Champions in Soc Trang, Vietnam, 2023.

Indonesia

In partnership with UNICEF Indonesia, the University of Gadjah Mada, the Ministry of Health in Indonesia and the University of Sydney, we delivered a training-of-trainers (TOT) program to build on UNICEF Indonesia's current vaccine interpersonal communication (IPC) training and evaluate the effectiveness of the program. This program aims to train leaders in communities, such as religious leaders, youth leaders and healthcare workers to engage with members of their communities about vaccines, and to help increase the uptake and knowledge of vaccination in Indonesia.

We conducted a codesign workshop in Jakarta in March 2024, with 72 key stakeholders, to build on the work done in consultative meetings and systematic review to further understand barriers to immunisation and co-design materials for the TOT program.

In September 2024, we ran the national TOT workshop Bandung, to teach trainers skills such as how to engage, connect and train community members to teach others about vaccines and vaccine communication. We trained 34 participants (88.2 per cent female), including Ministry of Health Indonesia immunisation and health promotion units, Red Cross, faith organisations, youth organisations, family planning organisations and provincial health centres including members of the health workforce such as midwives, paediatricians and cadres. These participants are now referred to as ‘trainers’, and go on to train health workers, religious leaders and youth leaders to be ‘communicators’. These communicators can host vaccine information sessions in their communities.

Image: Image: Participants of our Training-of-Trainers workshop in Bandung, Indonesia, 2024.

Image: Margie opening our national codesign workshop in Jakarta, Indonesia, 2024.

Image: Attendees of our national codesign workshop, in Jakarta Indonesia, 2024.

Materials from the Vaccine Champions Program were adapted to create the Papua New Guinean Vaccine Champion Plus Training Program in 2025.

This program was funded by UNICEF and the Australian Regional Immunisation Alliance (ARIA) and led by Milena Dalton of the Burnet Institute in collaboration with MCRI and the University of Sydney.

In September 2025, Dr Jess Kaufman joined Dr Delly Babona (Burnet Institute) and Prof Julie Leask (USyd) in Papua New Guinea to deliver training to 8 Master Trainers from the Eastern Highlands, Madang and Morobe Provinces. Trainers were representatives from local NGO Caring for the Earth (CARE), UNICEF Health Program and Promotion Officers, and Provincial Health Authority Family Health Services Managers. 

From November 2025, Master Trainers began running downstream training of Vaccine Champions, including health care workers, community and religious leaders. 

Vietnam

We conducted a scoping review of literature into the behavioural and social drivers of COVID-19 vaccination in Vietnam.

In collaboration with the National Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology, we developed a vaccine information and communication handbook to support health workers and trainees in communicating about vaccines.

Visit the Vaccine Information and Communication Handbook website

Fiji

Led by the University of Technology Sydney, together we developed a whole-of-life flipchart that tells the story of a multigenerational family asking questions about new, routine, HPV and COVID-19 vaccines for their family. To understand community needs, behaviours and attitudes, as well as piloting and evaluating the flipchart, we conducted 25 focus groups with 392 participants overall, including community health workers, community members, nurses and Ministry of Health Medical Services Staff. Health workers and vaccine champions have been trained to use this flipchart to speak about vaccines throughout Fiji. The flipchart was designed in two languages: Fijian and English.

Image: Example of the whole-of-life flipchart

Tonga

HPV vaccine promotion videos

MCRI partnered with the New Zealand digital design firm Bright Sundays to develop 11 videos for HPV vaccine promotion. The videos can be viewed on the Tonga Ministry of Health YouTube channel below.

Tonga Ministry of Health YouTube Information Hub

HPV vaccines for adolescent girls in Tonga

In partnership with the University of Technology Sydney, we developed a HPV flipchart that shares information about HPV vaccines for adolescent girls in Tonga, to support the ongoing HPV vaccination campaign. To develop and pilot the flipchart, we conducted 14 focus groups and three interviews with a total of 101 participants, including primary and secondary school teachers, adolescent girls between 15-17 years old, mothers, fathers, reproductive health nurses, immunisation program staff and vaccine champions. The flipchart was designed in two languages: Tongan and English.

Image: Example of the HPV flipchart

The Philippines

In July 2022 in partnership with the University of the Philippines, we investigated factors affecting COVID-19 and routine vaccine uptake in low-coverage regions in the Philippines, including caregivers’ views and experiences with childhood vaccination. Throughout Region IV-B, Region V and Region VIII in the Philippines, information was gathered through 775 surveys, 57 key informant interviews covering national, regional, provincial and municipal levels, and focus group discussions with 143 participants.

We are working with the University of Philippines, UNICEF Philippines and the Centre for Disease Control (CDC) to evaluate the implementation of the current interpersonal communication training, “Bakuna Champions Playbook”. This work is supported by the CDC.

Partnerships

This work is led by Professor Margie Danchin and Dr Jessica Kaufman, coordinated by Belle Overmars, and supported by Yasmin Mohamed and Jaysha Tippins from the Vaccine Uptake group.

Collaborations

This work has been done in collaboration with:

• University of Sydney
• University of New South Wales
• University of Technology Sydney
• Fiji National University
• University of Gadjah Mada
• University of Philippines
• Tupou Tertiary Institute
• Woolcock Institute
• Victorian Department of Health
• Fiji Ministry of Health and Medical Services
• Tonga Ministry of Health
• Ministry of Health in Indonesia
• UNICEF Pacific
• UNICEF Vietnam
• UNICEF Indonesia
• UNICEF Philippines
• Centre for Disease Control (CDC)
• National Centre for Immunisation Research and Surveillance (NCIRS)

All of this work is supported by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT).