Article Text

Download PDFPDF

The influence of gender on immunisation: using an ecological framework to examine intersecting inequities and pathways to change
  1. Marta Feletto,
  2. Alyssa Sharkey
  1. Health Section, UNICEF, New York, New York, USA
  1. Correspondence to Dr Alyssa Sharkey; asharkey{at}unicef.org

Abstract

There is still a substantial knowledge gap on how gender mediates child health in general, and child immunisation outcomes in particular. Similarly, implementation of interventions to mitigate gender inequities that hinder children from being vaccinated requires additional perspectives and research. We adopt an intersectional approach to gender and delve into the social ecology of implementation, to show how gender inequities and their connection with immunisation are grounded in the interplay between individual, household, community and system factors. We show how an ecological model can be used as an overarching framework to support more precise identification of the mechanisms causing gender inequity and their structural complexity, to identify suitable change agents and interventions that target the underlying causes of marginalisation, and to ensure outcomes are relevant within specific population groups.

  • health systems
  • immunisation
  • public health

This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited, appropriate credit is given, any changes made indicated, and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.

Statistics from Altmetric.com

Request Permissions

If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

Footnotes

  • Handling editor Stephanie M Topp

  • Contributors MF and AS conceived the analysis. MF developed the paper and AS commented on drafts. Both authors agree with the manuscript’s results and conclusions.

  • Funding This article is based on work funded through a grant from Gavi, The Vaccine Alliance to UNICEF.

  • Competing interests None declared.

  • Patient consent for publication Not required.

  • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

  • Data availability statement No additional data are available.