On October 3 – 4, 2024, the Mercury Project, together with the University of Nairobi’s Institute for Development Studies, welcomed leaders from the public, private, and philanthropic communities to the Mercury Project Solutions Summit. Abdul El-Sayed, doctor, epidemiologist, and director of the Wayne County, Michigan, Department of Health, Human, and Veterans Services, reflects on what he learned about how researchers and policymakers can work together to develop and implement evidence to improve well-being.

The Mercury Project, together with the University of Nairobi’s Institute for Development Studies, welcomes leaders from the public, private, and philanthropic communities to the Mercury Project Solutions Summit in Nairobi from October 3-4. We welcome colleagues from around the world to join us online for the opening plenary, at which representatives from the research, policy, and philanthropic communities will frame both the challenges and the opportunities for evidence-based strategies that build robust vaccine demand chains and support science-based health decision-making.

In this post, SSRC Mercury Project researchers Anwesha Bhattacharya (Harvard Kennedy School), Erik Jorgensen (Inclusion Economics at Yale University), Urvi Naik (Inclusion Economics India Centre), and Charity Troyer Moore (Inclusion Economics at Yale University) discuss the challenges to pursuing research on susceptibility to inaccurate information in lower-income populations.

In this essay, Rutgers University professor Charles Senteio describes how his research has been enhanced by the “invisible benefits” of participation in the SSRC’s global Mercury Project research consortium. He illustrates how funders’ choices in structuring collaborative work–within and across teams–create value beyond the direct funding of research projects, enabling new ideas and collaborations that wouldn’t have otherwise happened.

As Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance announces its next five-year strategy, the SSRC’s Mercury Project explains the importance of building robust and science-informed vaccine demand chains to complement vaccine supply chains.

To build researchers' communications skills, the Mercury Project recently organized two convenings featuring Ann Searight Christiano, director of the University of Florida’s Center for Public Interest Communications, and Estelle Willie, director of Health Policy and Communications at The Rockefeller Foundation. These sessions imparted valuable lessons on effective research communication.

The Mercury Project’s 18-team global research consortium is preparing to report findings and launch the next phase of its work. At an upcoming Solutions Summit in Nairobi, researchers and global health policy leaders will identify the most promising interventions to increase vaccine demand from the Mercury Project’s first phase of work, and will develop master protocol blueprints to evaluate those interventions across multiple diverse settings.

Researchers Fortunate Machingura and Leslie Nyoni explain how they are leading the Zimbabwe arm of a four-country study (that also includes Cote d'Ivoire, Malawi, and Senegal) to equip frontline health workers with new skills in empathetic personal communication and evaluate the impacts on vaccine uptake and trust.

Researchers Simon Chauchard and Sumitra Badrinathan explain how they are designing and testing one of the most ambitious media and science information literacy programs to date—with 14,000 students in Bihar, one of the lowest-income states in India.

Mercury Project directors Heather Lanthon and Rebecca Gluskin respond to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s annual letter laying out the foundation's investment agenda. For successful programs to translate into meaningful change, philanthropies have to also invest in the social and behavioral science needed to scale those programs.