The Latest in Public Health Research: Fixing Digital Health Apparatus? Local Governments’ COVID-19 Vaccine Promotion on the Frontline in Urban China
April 4, 12:10 pm – 1:00 pm PDT
Speaker: Yan Long, Assistant Professor, UC Berkeley Department of Sociology
A growing body of public health research investigates the formal design of various policy tools and national strategies to increase vaccine uptakes. Yet little is known about how those tools and strategies play out in state agencies’ everyday practice. To address this gap, we examine the implementation of China’s COVID-19 vaccine program by neighborhood government agencies that shapes urban residents’ apprehension about vaccines, by drawing on in-depth interviews with 50 front-line public employees in Shenzhen, the Silicon Valley of China. Our analysis reveals bureaucratic chaos on the ground resulted from the national government’s lofty goals to achieve high vaccine coverage through digital surveillance instruments. As local agencies were scrambling to invent local practices to repair the situation and push forward the vaccine rollout, the various combinations of organizational pressure, frontline workers’ personal perspectives on vaccination, and neighborhood features either expand or diminish the space for residents’ vaccine hesitancy and opposition to persist.
Event Contact: lhg@berkeley.edu
Access Coordinator: Lauren Goldstein, lhg@berkeley.edu, 510-664-7959
