LINQ manages IMPRINT, an inter-disciplinary network representing stakeholders from basic science, immunology, vaccinology, social sciences, industry, public health as well as national and international policymakers who have come together to tackle the key challenges in the best use of vaccines in pregnancy and newborns. The network has received funding from the UK’s Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) and is coordinated by Prof. Beate Kampmann, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), and Co-Director Dr. Chrissie Jones, University of Southampton.
The five-year IMPRINT network is now in its final stages and will come to an end this year on March 31. To ensure that the network lives on and continues to have an impact also after the funding period, LINQ has worked closely with the LSHTM team for the past few months to renew and expand the IMPRINT intranet.
Launched in late December 2021, the new intranet combines many classic elements of an intranet with networking features and a Public Engagement Toolkit. The innovative design allows IMPRINT’s around 300 network members to connect through the platform, learn from each other’s work, and share relevant upcoming events with the wider network and indicate their attendance status.
Sharing lessons learned with the broader network
In the context of IMPRINT, ten public engagement projects were carried out across the UK and in several of IMPRINT's partner countries, including Bangladesh, India, Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, Tanzania, and Uganda between 2019 and 2021. LINQ and a team at LSHTM have worked with the individual project leads to summarize all projects as well as their process best practices and more tangible outputs (including videos, radio messages, and flyers) in a Public Engagement Toolkit on the new intranet.
The aim of the toolkit is to make accessing the information produced by the project teams quick and simple for all IMPRINT members, helping them to leverage this knowledge in their future work.
A summary of each public engagement project can also be found on the public IMPRINT website. This also houses two animated explainer videos that the network has produced to educate and raise awareness about vaccines, including the COVID-19 vaccines, in pregnancy. The English videos were recently translated into Arabic, Bengali, Cantonese, French, Gujarati, Polish, Portuguese, Punjabi, Spanish, Urdu, Welsh.
LINQ’s broad support for IMPRINT’s Public Engagement Project
We provide more detailed insights into our work with IMPRINT here. We have taken on a plethora of roles to ensure that the network runs smoothly and, among other things, supported the public engagement projects at every step – from launching the calls to overseeing the reporting. Hence, we are beyond glad to see these projects live on in the Public Engagement Toolkit.