About Us
Working Towards Our Better Tomorrow
WeCanVax is a community initiative to help stop the spread of COVID-19 by promoting COVID-19 vaccine confidence in diverse communities across Montreal. Our goal is to catalyze positive change by empowering individual actions to promote healthier communities.
We will meet this need by distributing evidence-based social and traditional media content informing COVID-19 vaccine safety and effectiveness, designed with diverse communities in mind. We are funded by the Public Health Agency of Canada's (PHAC) Community Innovation Challenge.
Our Principles
Empower
To empower individuals to make well-informed health choices.
Advocate
To advocate for greater access to health resources in under-funded communities.
Engage
To engage communities in understanding their needs when designing health positive messaging.
What We Do
WeCanVax is a health communication program prioritizing racialized communities in Quebec. WeCanVax involves Parc Extension in co-creating and co-implementing a public health campaign to promote COVID-19 vaccine confidence.The social media and traditional poster campaign enables Canadians to take ownership of their health.
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We co-created and co-designed 20+ unique posters capturing the Humans of Parc Extension. Our weekly community roundtables captured the voices and opinions of Parc-Ex experts and community members for our campaign design and objectives. On the posters, we featured a quote with reasons why Parc Ex community members got vaccinated. During an informal interview, community members were interviewed to understand their personal reasons for getting vaccinated and how the pandemic has impacted them.
For example, Kajal got vaccinated for her two sons and Alaudeen, a business owner, received his vaccine for his customers. This conveyed information to more personally resonate with viewers and were tailored to the people of Parc Ex. These initial sets of posters were distributed to volunteer community members who provided feedback and areas of improvement. For instance, we removed the use of symbols (needles, syringes) and colours (blues and reds) that were associated with the biomedical context.
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Overall, we reached an audience of 17K+ across social media platforms, received positive feedback from Parc-Ex residents, and participated in six media engagements for Parc Ex news, CTV and CBC news. Although it is difficult to measure the impact, vaccination rates in Parc-Ex have climbed from 10% below the Montreal average in June to exceeding the city’s average in August.
We scaled the poster distribution to the entire borough in posting sites, schools, churches, ethnic grocery stores, and recreational centers following unanimous approval.
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Our Media Campaign
Our campaign will have three phases:
1) Design, 2) Pilot, and 3) Launch.
Design Phase: The design, implementation and evaluation of WeCanVax was collaborative and community-led. Health promotors and content advisors co-create the activities and plans, and also build capacity of community partners from Parc-Extension to engage in and benefit from the health communication process.
Pilot Phase: The engagement of community partners for creative input and feedback for proposed artistic content.
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Launch Phase: The distribution of material to Parc Extension using traditional media (door-to-door, postering, word of mouth) and social media (Facebook, Instagram).
