# Inoculating and boosting against HIV vaccine misinformation among adolescent girls and young women in South Africa

> **NIH NIH R01** · UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA · 2024 · $583,238

## Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY
A safe, effective, affordable and acceptable vaccine against HIV has been an epidemic-ending goal for decades,
and recent years have seen substantial progress towards developing and testing promising candidate vaccines.
For highly vulnerable groups like adolescent girls and young women (AGYW) in sub-Saharan Africa, access and
uptake of vaccines will be essential for reducing the exceptionally high HIV incidence observed in recent years.
This is particularly true in South Africa, which has the world's largest HIV epidemic and several active HIV vaccine
trial programs. While an HIV vaccine has the potential to substantially reduce HIV risk, realizing this potential will
require widespread vaccine uptake. Unfortunately, the lived experiences of both the HIV epidemic and the
ongoing COVID-19 pandemic have laid the groundwork for an infodemic of misinformation about the HIV
vaccine. Likely attributes of the HIV vaccine (e.g., partial protection against HIV), low trust in governmental and
medical research institutions, and poor understanding of how vaccines work will leave an HIV vaccine program
vulnerable to misinformation among the populations who would most benefit from vaccine-induced protection.
To realize the benefits of future HIV vaccines, novel communication strategies are needed to “inoculate”
individuals at highest risk of HIV infection against contagious vaccine misinformation. In this study, we bring
together two promising approaches – psychological inoculation theory and behavioral economics – to fight HIV
vaccine misinformation. Psychological inoculation theory offers a compelling approach to building “resistance”
to vaccine misinformation through explicit exposure to a “weakened” version (via direct refutation) of false
arguments underlying misinformation, before stronger versions of misinformation are encountered. Importantly,
by
posits
debunking
 prebunking (or pre-emptively warning individuals about) emerging misinformation, inoculation theory also
that t hey will be better able to r esist future misinformation. Prebunking avoids the greater challenge of
 once misinformation has lodged. In addition, behavioral economics provides a complementary
framework that recognize the cognitive and attentional constraints faced by individuals and can inform more
effective inoculation messages. We propose a randomized controlled trial of inoculation messages with a
behavioral economics “boost” with AGYW in South Africa, a population highly vulnerable to both HIV infection
and to vaccine misinformation. Mirroring a vaccine trial, our behavioral trial will evaluate the efficacy, safety,
durability, and generalized immunity effects of inoculation messages that are boosted with behavioral economics
insights. We will also evaluate differential responses to the messages by important subgroups of AGYW. This
proof--of-concept project has the potential to identify innovative communication strategies to build resistance to
emerging and evol...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10845464
- **Project number:** 5R01MH132401-02
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA
- **Principal Investigator:** Alison Meredith Buttenheim
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2024
- **Award amount:** $583,238
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2023-05-22 → 2026-01-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10845464

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10845464, Inoculating and boosting against HIV vaccine misinformation among adolescent girls and young women in South Africa (5R01MH132401-02). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-26 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10845464. Licensed CC0.

---

*[NIH grants dataset](/datasets/nih-grants) · CC0 1.0*