How to Find and Collaborate with Trusted Messengers

To correctly engage community leaders is to establish the current state of information already flowing through their channels. The initial approach centered on understanding what information is already accessible to them, how they are accessing this information (particularly under the current pandemic shift to online communities), and where did trust fall outside of government outlets.

In our case and in order to understand where immigrant Coloradoans were obtaining their COVID-19 information, their top vaccine concerns, and who they trusted for vaccine information, we distributed a survey via Coloradan community organizations, state list-servs, and Craigslist, garnering 140 immigrant respondents in two weeks.

When asked whether they would take the vaccine if it were available today, 37.5 percent of English speaking respondents expressed they were unsure compared to 57.1 percent of Spanish speaking respondents. While statistically representative (the majority of respondents were under 45 and identified as Mexican or Central American), our results were similar to vaccine attitudes among non-White Coloradans from a more quantitatively rigorous survey conducted by CDPHE earlier in 2020.

The top information gaps leading to uncertainty and concern about the vaccine, according to our survey respondents and community leaders we interviewed, fell into three main categories:

• COVID-19 vaccine side effects, hospitalization, and missing work were especially concerning for Coloradans who lacked health insurance or couldn’t afford or access sick leave.
• How the speed of the COVID-19 vaccine development process may have affected its safety or efficacy, and a desire to not be the first test subjects of a new vaccine.
• Availability and logistics for getting the vaccine. Seeing a large number of these questions was promising. They showed an interest in getting the vaccine, if concerns about cost, immigration status, and availability were answered.

These results were promising. They indicate that only a small fragment of immigrant Coloradans were adamantly against the vaccine. A much larger subset described uncertainty due to information gaps that could be resolved. Vaccine hesitancy among immigrant communities is an opportunity to address the concerns of pandemic-stressed residents seeking to avoid additional risk from institutions that have largely not earned their trust. Responding to those who are vaccine hesitant is quite different than responding to those who are anti-vaccines, in general. We chose to focus on the vaccine hesitant.

This process can be easily replicated in any level of government, using open channels of communication, aimed at understanding the landscape before implementing policy changes and new programs.

In interviews with immigrant community leaders and community members, we heard the same recurring theme. It’s best summed up with a quote from a community organizer:

“It’s not just about the content, it’s also about the messenger,” she shrugged. “As government communicators, we often overestimate the influence of traditional government spokespeople (ex: elected officials) with the public. We hope that just because our information is vetted, the public will automatically find it credible.”

Early research confirms that in order for information to really penetrate immigrant communities, it has to go beyond translations of government content. Transcreators, people who can translate public health information into non-English languages, can create content that reframes messages in culturally relevant ways. In particular, transcreators that the community already trusted.

Our survey respondents and interviewees all pointed to the same set of trusted messengers:

• Doctors and other healthcare workers from immigrant backgrounds
• Community organizers from immigrant backgrounds
• Faith leaders in immigrant communities
• Educational leaders from immigrant backgrounds

Other criteria we considered, based on feasibility and feedback from our Colorado partners:

• Social media reach: We found followings as small as a couple hundred to be effective in spreading COVID-19 messages, if they created shareable content in less common languages.
• Location: We heard repeatedly from community leaders that immigrant voices inside and outside Colorado were welcome.
• Diversity: We heard that it was important to consider fluency in languages beyond English and Spanish to reach smaller, underserved immigrant communities.

In three weeks, we compiled a supplemental Google Sheets directory of over 50 trusted messengers that matched the majority of our criteria by casting a wide net of inquiry through personal contacts, community organizations, state partners, Google, and social media hashtags. Most of these names were individuals already connected with the state, in various capacities, including participants already working to spread messages in their communities, confirming the importance of maintaining those relationships. By centralizing names of trusted messengers from different staff members in a single spreadsheet, it made it easier for state partners to effectively use those partnerships.

Transcreators, community-based organization leaders, and other important stakeholders in the community are normally eager to help their communities. Maintaining a relationship with them and working alongside them to bring the most relevant information to their public proved to be an effective strategy.

In our sprint, we launched a video pilot that confirmed our hypothesis of supporting trusted messengers with funds and concise instructions would lead to quickly created, easily shareable, and culturally relevant videos about top vaccine concerns in multiple languages. In two short weeks, our team recruited three trusted messengers who produced five videos in English, Spanish, French, and Arabic about vaccine side effects and the development process. Collectively, the videos have now been viewed over a thousand times since they were published the last week of January 2021. We focused on video, using feedback from community leaders who emphasized the need for concise messages that were Facebook, WhatsApp, and YouTube-friendly, and could engage and educate those who could not read large amounts of written content due to a lack of time or literacy.

Supported by contacts at Coloradan community organizations and our directory research, we invited half a dozen trusted messengers (healthcare workers, community organizers, and faith leaders), resulting in three pilot video creators who said yes. Each video creator received $250 for their pilot participation.

Many thanks to our pilot video creators, and their excellent videos, linked here:

• Dr. Lily Cervantes, a Denver-area physician who provided videos in English and Spanish.
• Dr. AK Agunbiade, a Nigerian American ER doctor who recorded videos in English and French (with French support from Jocelyne Tatchou).
• Imam Muhammad Kolila, head of the Downtown Denver Islamic Center who answered vaccine questions in Arabic.

All of the community leaders we interviewed wanted to enhance existing efforts to communicate vaccine information with their community members. With the abundant volume of ever-changing information, they were often unsure what messages to prioritize to help state efforts, or too busy to find and closely read a 20+ page FAQ to find answers to their community’s top concerns. Most of these agencies had received grants from the state or philanthropic partners to enhance outreach to their target communities, some specifically with video content, but we found our pilot additive to those resources.

Immigrant community-based organizations and leaders were very busy in 2020, and so, for the video pilot, we made it as easy as possible. Our video guide was a series of concise and clear instructions covering recommended video topics, deadlines, and goals. We used the state’s FAQs to create three pages of video concepts, with bulleted messaging guidance for one- to two-minute videos on the most pressing topics. Each of the creators had a one hour Q&A with our team to align on video goals, understand project deadlines, and discuss initial video ideas. After our team approved their initial scripts, our participants were off to the races, producing and posting social media ready videos in one week.