Vaccination campaign “Conversations with Scientists” wins European award

The “Conversations with Scientists: Decades of research in days for COVID-19 vaccines” campaign, launched during European Vaccination Week in April 2021 with the aim of demystifying the rapid development of COVID-19 vaccines and responding to concerns and questions from the public, was given the award for Best European Campaign 2021-2023 by the International Union of Immunological Societies (IUIS) and the European Federation of Immunological Societies (EFIS) during the 2023 IUIS congress, which took place on the 27th of November in South Africa.

The campaign was the result of a collaborative effort between COLife – a collaboration between six life sciences research institutions located in the Lisbon and Oeiras regions – the Institute for Research and Innovation in Health at the University of Porto (i3S), the Portuguese Society of Immunology (SPI) and Ciência-Viva - the National Agency for Scientific and Technological Culture. Over the ten days, 121 scientists from various Portuguese institutions participated in around 400 sessions, reaching varied audiences across the country and extending the digital reach to Timor-Leste and São Tomé and Príncipe.

As Margarida Saraiva, i3S researcher and one of the campaign coordinators, explains the main objective was to “inform society about the benefits of vaccination in a transparent way based on scientific facts. Hence the idea of organizing Conversations with Scientists”. Several researchers from the i3S participated in the campaign, from group leaders to master’s students, mobilizing in an initiative to bring science closer to citizens.

Between April the 20th and 30th in 2021, scientists interacted with more than ten thousand people, predominantly young people, discussing the intricacies of the scientific process, the mechanism of action of vaccines, their protective role, and the importance of vaccines in the fight against the pandemic. The dialogue promoted clarification on how decades of scientific research culminated in the rapid creation of safe and effective vaccines against COVID-19.

Margarida Saraiva, who at the time was also president of the Portuguese Society of Immunology, recognizes that “being president of the SPI during the pandemic was a great challenge due to the sudden increase in everyone's interest in immunology and, in particular, in vaccines”. She emphasizes “being able to answer questions and reassure society about the safety and effectiveness of vaccines against COVID-19 was a very important mission. It was a privilege to be part of this campaign and to be able to see the involvement of the Portuguese scientific community, with the support of colleagues from Immunology to Neurosciences”.

For Rosalia Vargas, President of Ciência Viva - National Agency for Scientific and Technological Culture, “the success of this campaign was obvious not only for its direct reach, but also for its digital footprint through the creation of a web page and a video, co-developed by the scientific community and the Ciência Viva teams. These digital materials offered comprehensive information about the development, science, and safety of vaccines against COVID-19, and this collaborative campaign truly managed to contribute to increasing Portuguese citizens’ existing trust in science and, particularly, in health”.