In 2022, Huron County Public Health, Ohio, was selected to participate in NACCHO’s CDC-funded Equipping Local Health Departments to Address Vaccine Hesitancy project. This project provided funding for three local health departments (LHDs) to conduct CDC’s Rapid Community Assessment (RCA) to better understand vaccine hesitancy, and develop a plan to increase vaccine uptake in selected communities.

Huron County chose to use their RCA to better understand routine vaccine questions, concerns, and barriers of residents of their county in order to develop a plan to increase vaccine confidence and uptake. To do this, they conducted a survey, community partner interviews, and intercept interviews. Between these three methods, they received responses from over 300 community members. They identified themes of misinformation, mistrust in COVID-19 vaccine research and public health agencies, as well as a lack of concern about vaccine preventable diseases.

To address these themes, Huron County worked with a professional videographer to create a video featuring local health care providers and faith leaders who are well known and respected in the community. The video is available to watch on Huron County’s Vaccine website and is being shared on social media channels. They also sent postcards to all residents of the county to address misinformation (shown above) and are working to regain the trust of the community by having a presence at various community events.