Building trust in COVID-19 vaccination and other public health interventions is fundamental to the work of public health and efforts to end the COVID-19 pandemic. We can build trust by combating misinformation, supporting trusted messengers and networks, improving our trustworthiness, and deepening relationships that engender trust over time. Building trust between public health and communities facilitates acceptance of public health interventions and can cultivate an equitable COVID-19 response now and conditions for well-being in the future.

Themes

• • Trust is foundational to public health. Trust is foundational to the work of public health. It can help us expand vaccination and implement community mitigation strategies and other strategies to end the COVID-19 pandemic and advance a robust and sustainable public health system for the future.
  • We must build back trust. Public trust and trust in institutions have declined in recent years. This is a backdrop to pervasive distrust in government, public health, and medicine that threaten the success of our efforts to end the COVID-19 pandemic and advance equity.
  • An equitable COVID-19 response requires trust building. To end the COVID-19 pandemic we must build trust in vaccination, contact tracing, testing, and other measures. Building trust helps facilitate acceptance of public health measures and mandates, overcome barriers to trust, and reinforce good health behaviors.
  • Together we can overcome barriers to trust. Building trust requires humility, empathy, and accountability; it requires us to meet communities where they are, show up as authentic partners, listen, co-lead, work with trusted messengers, and communicate to combat misinformation.

Equity & Systems

Many communities of color have suffered innumerable harms under our health care and public health systems–going back generations–and have good reasons for distrusting government, public health, research, and medicine. We can build trust by becoming more deserving of it, and fostering authentic, deep, respectful relationships with community partners for health equity.