Executive Office Building, Washington, DC
ADMINISTRATOR POWER: Thank you Adam, for that introduction, to Dr. Elsanousi and Faiths4Vaccines for the chance to cement our partnership with your vital organization.
It’s often casually thrown around that people who take on difficult and worthy challenges are “doing God’s work” but in the case of Faths4Vaccines, I feel it’s well-earned.
I also want to thank Executive Director Melissa Rogers on this, the one year anniversary of the establishment of the White House Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships.
This office was established to strengthen our government’s ties to organizations that serve people in need in their communities, and right now, the world is in grave need of trust.
Trust in our institutions, trust in our communities, trust in our scientists and healthcare professionals, trust that the vaccines we have to fight COVID-19 are safe and effective.
In fact, in a major study of over 177 countries, the level of trust in a society had a greater impact on the number of COVID-19 infections than population density, GDP per capita, or even the fact that nicer weather keeps people outdoors. Again, trust mattered more.
And while many governments have struggled to build the kind of trust with their citizens necessary to successfully fight this pandemic and the misinformation surrounding it, it's clear that people still trust their religious leaders. A recent survey of 34 countries in Africa showed that two-third of people rated their clergy as more trustworthy than their political figures.
I’ve seen, firsthand, just how powerful the role of faith-based leaders can be in a public health emergency.
When Ebola was raging through West Africa, I traveled to the Grand Mosque in Conakry to meet with Guinea’s Grand Imam Camara.
For centuries, Guinean’s honored their dead by holding their bodies close, performing ablutions, and wrapping them in shrouds.
These are not just routine traditions; they are rituals of intense emotion and care, loving gestures that are fundamental parts of weathering grief and attaining closure.
They were also, unfortunately, Ebola’s greatest weapon in spreading rapidly—weaponizing our own humanity against us as the disease passed from the dead to living.
It was Grand Imam Camara and thousands of religious leaders like him who educated people about the transmission of Ebola and emphasized that the Koran forbids followers to knowingly endanger their own lives and those of others.
It was the power of faith that kept mothers at arms length from their sick children, that kept sons from caressing their dead fathers, and ultimately broke the chain of Ebola’s transmission.
Today, as we grapple with a new enemy in COVID-19, we see that faith has just as important a role to play.
Not only do we have to fight this virus, as we did with Ebola, the rapid spread of smartphones and social media throughout the world means that we also have to fight the rumors, conspiracy theories, and outright lies that constantly ricochet throughout our digital spaces.
Luckily, the evidence is clear that when people see their religious leaders get vaccinated and encourage them to do so as well, they show higher confidence in COVID-19 vaccines.
In fact, a recent survey showed that in India and several countries in Africa, a belief that religious leaders don’t want followers to be vaccinated is one of the greatest drivers of hesitancy—greater even than a belief in common misinformation like that vaccines are untested or might give people COVID-19 rather than protect them against it.
And when we do enlist faith-based partners and their communities to fight COVID-19 misinformation, we have witnessed impressive results.
In Côte d’Ivoire, USAID developed a rumor-tracking system to catalog persistent misinformation and target public information campaigns to help fight it.
After discovering persistent rumors regarding the safety and possible negative effects of vaccines, we worked with the Ministry of Health’s Risk Communication groups to develop messaging for media campaigns, including campaigns on religious radio stations.
As a result of these efforts, Cote d’Ivoire was able to raise its vaccination rate from 22 percent to 36 percent—in just one month, last December.
So, if we want to save lives, protect people from COVID-19, prevent the emergence of new variants, and end this pandemic, then we must partner with the faith community to spread the truth about these vaccines—that they are safe, tested, and effective.
That getting vaccinated is, in the words of Pope Francis, “An act of love.”
That’s why I am so eager to secure our partnership with Faiths4Vaccines with today’s signing of a memorandum of understanding.
The timing couldn’t be better. In December, I launched the Initiative for Global Vaccine Access, or GLOBALVAX, the United States’ effort to accelerate efforts to get COVID-19 shots into arms, save lives today, and prevent future outbreaks.
A big focus of that effort will be investing in the infrastructure needed to transport and distribute vaccines—but an indispensable part of it will be relying on trusted messengers to evangelize the necessity of vaccines and fight misinformation.
As a result of this new partnership, USAID will recruit community-led and faith-based leaders to shape our Global Vax response, and integrate their voices into the design and implementation of our country-level COVID-19 strategies.
Because storytelling is a key part of overcoming vaccine hesitancy, we will look to partner with Faiths4Vaccines to identify and share powerful examples of our successes, so that others can benefit from our learnings.
And, since this is an effort that needs to be responsive to the needs and concerns of specific communities, together we will convene regional summits, local workshops, and tailored campaigns to strengthen our efforts on the frontlines.
Taken together, these steps will help us usher in a year of action—a crucial year in our fight to put COVID-19 behind us.
They will help us counter the misinformation that spreads online even faster than this virus.
And they will reestablish the trust necessary to end this pandemic—by relying on faith.
Thank you.