The next element of your research and landscaping involves identifying all the important people and organisations who play a role in immunisation and vaccines.
You’ll need to also identify key players in all related areas of public health such as maternal and child health, and those in the public sphere who may be influential. These are known as stakeholders.
Ask yourself
Quick tips
Some of your research into key stakeholders – such as who is influential – may be sensitive information. Consider how much you write down and who you share this information with.
- Who is already advocating for immunisation strengthening or new vaccine introductions?
- What other organisations are working towards similar goals of improving maternal and child health?
- Who are the influential voices in your country, region or community that can have a positive impact?
Mapping influence
When you have listed the organisations and names of all your stakeholders, you should work to determine how influential and interested they are in your cause. That will help you to decide who to work with, who might be a messenger or champion for immunisation and vaccines, and at whom to direct your efforts to persuade and influence.
- On the worksheet for Stakeholder Landscaping and Influence Mapping you will have assigned a ranking of 1 to 5 for ‘influence’, and similarly 1 to 5 for ‘interest’ for each stakeholder.
- On a large piece of paper or on a wall, draw a graph as shown above:
- With sticky notes (or markers if you wish), plot your stakeholders by where they fall on the graph
for ‘influence’ and ‘interest’. - Where the stakeholders lie will indicate who you should be working with (high interest, high influence
or both), who may be a good champion or messenger (high influence), and who you need to persuade
(High influence, low interest).
Note: you can repeat this process for each specific vaccine or immunisation issue, and use it as a baseline and monitoring tool to map progress in influencing stakeholders, building coalitions.
