Countering the Disinformation Machine: Public engagement with Southwark Council’s COVID-19 immunisation strategy

This pilot study demonstrates the value of human-centred and collaborative design approaches in public health environments. It develops an understanding of how we can collaborate with local strategic units delivering public health communication and public health services effectively, and counter misinformation leading to a lack of public engagement with the government’s vaccination drive in Southwark Council.

The project approach is qualitative, iterative, creative, and participatory, drawing on design research methods, graphic design and visual research methods, service design, co-design and participatory methods. Throughout the project, researchers, research assistants and students at postgraduate and undergraduate level were involved in different phases of research, analysis, participatory design practices, designing, prototyping and testing communication artefacts, service delivery proposals and policy guidelines to engage vaccine-hesitant populations in Southwark.

The project shows how direct public engagement at strategy design level can support sustainable strategies. The project helps to identify barriers and issues in public engagement with the health strategy and proposes how design could be used in this space to help the vaccination effort.

Gaining knowledge of the subject of health literacy, public health and local strategies for vaccination, the project raises questions based on its insights, to be explored further. Some of the insights (e.g. general population health literacy, the idea of safe spaces, etc.) will form the basis of a further bid.