Mercury Project Funds Research to Convince More People to Get COVID Shots

by TVR Staff

Published September 4, 2022 | Vaccination, Vaccines

The Mercury Project, a global consortium of researchers dedicated to “combating the impacts of mis- and disinformation on public health,” is being sponsored by the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) of Brooklyn, New York. SSRC announced on Aug. 23, 2022 that it will provide $7.2 million in grant funding teams doing behavioral research aimed at better understanding “how health mis- and disinformation spreads, how to combat it, and how to build stronger information systems,” for the purpose of using this knowledge to develop strategies—”locally tailored solutions”—to increase COVID-19 vaccination rates.^{1 2 3}

Money distributed as part of The Mercury Project (which alludes to the ancient Roman god Mercury of messages and communication) will be given to 12 research teams working in the United States and 16 other countries, including Bolivia, Brazil, Côte D’Ivoire, Ghana, Haiti, India, Kenya, Malawi, Mexico, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Tanzania and Zimbabwe..^{1 2 3}

Harnessing Influencers to Counter Misinformation and Targeting Children

“With COVID-19 prevalent and rapidly evolving everywhere, there is a pressing need to identify interventions with the potential to increase vaccination take-up,” said SSRC president Anna Harvey. “Vaccines are only effective if they become vaccinations; vaccines are a scientific marvel but their potential is unfulfilled if they are left on the shelf.”^{1 3}

Each of the teams participating in The Mercury Project will receive more than $600,000 to conduct research topics such as “Combatting health misinformation with community-crafted messaging: Developing a scalable community-driven approach in Latin America and the United States.” The teams will also research how to…

harness influencers to counter misinformation²

and censor dissenting viewpoints on social media through…

network-transforming interventions for reducing the spread of health misinformation online²

A primary focus of the research will be children. According to the Rockefeller Foundation, the research will enable “literacy training for secondary school students in partnership with local authorities to help students identify COVID-19 vaccine misinformation.”³

“By funding projects on the ground around the world, this work will help us understand what works where, and why, and identify new ways to harness the power of connection and communication to advance public health goals,” said Heather Lanthorn, program director at The Mercury Project.¹

Mercury Project Has $10.25 Million in Available Funds

Funding donations for The Mercury Project currently stands at 10.25 million. The primary donor is the Rockefeller Foundation, which gave $7.5 million to the program in September 2021 to help cover the costs of “launching a research consortium to drive acceptance and uptake of COVID-19 vaccination efforts and provide insights to counter health mis- and dis- information” through Aug. 31, 2024.^{1 2 3}

The remaining funds for The Mercury Project were provided by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation ($2 million), Craig Newmark Philanthropies ($500,000) and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation ($250,000).^{1 2 4}

“We need to stop thinking about misinformation and disinformation as just a technology problem,” said Bruce Gellin, MD, Chief of Global Public Health Strategy of The Rockefeller Foundation and former U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Health and Director of the National Vaccine Program Office. “This requires swift, strategic, and synergized efforts embodied in the vision of The Mercury Project, a landmark effort to tackle these problems and build solutions we can use long after this pandemic is over to help protect us from any future pandemic threats.”⁴

National Science Foundation Partners With The Mercury Project to Increase Vaccinations

In a separate but similar initiative, SSRC, through The Mercury Project, is partnering with the National Science Foundation (NSF) on a $20 million effort to “support social and behavioral science R&D designed to identify interventions with the potential to increase vaccination demand and other health behaviors grounded in science-based public health guidance.⁵

The NSF is a federal agency that has a budget of about $10 billion appropriated by Congress.⁶

SSRC’s partnership with NSF will support research teams that are:

seeking to evaluate online or offline interventions to increase COVID-19 vaccination demand and other positive health behaviors, including by targeting the producers and/or consumers of inaccurate health information and/or by increasing confidence in reliable health information.⁵

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