A “Super Bowl Moment” for Health Care: How UNC Health Promotes Vaccination
// By Susan Dubuque //
In Part 2 of this series (Part 1 is here), Victor Reiss, vice president of consumerism and insights, marketing and communications for UNC Health, shares the health system’s research-based, comprehensive plan to address vaccine hesitancy. “For most health care marketing professionals, dealing with COVID-19 is the largest undertaking of a lifetime. This is truly a Super Bowl moment for every health care provider. All eyes are on us,” Reiss says.
Victor Reiss, UNC Health’s vice president of consumerism and insights, marketing and communications
On December 14, 2020, the first COVID-19 vaccination outside the clinical trials was administered in the U.S. But UNC Health began preparing for the vaccine rollout months earlier. “Our consumer insights team conducts monthly Brand Trackers, and in the summer of 2020, we began asking questions about consumers’ likelihood of getting a COVID vaccination,” explains Victor Reiss, UNC Health’s vice president of consumerism and insights, marketing and communications. “This provided us with three to four months of data and gave us a solid baseline of understanding.”
“It quickly became apparent that our consumers fell into one of three categories,” says Reiss. “About 30 percent of the respondents were early adopters or vaccine positive. These individuals raised their hands and expressed a desire to be vaccinated — and the sooner the better. A little more than half of our respondents were unsure or vaccine hesitant, and the balance were vaccine naysayers — that is, people who clearly reject the idea of being vaccinated.”
The team decided to focus on those who are vaccine hesitant, feeling that these individuals would be more likely to move into the vaccine positive group than those who are adamantly opposed to vaccination.