Understanding and strengthening vaccine confidence among temporary foreign workers in Manitoba: A community-based participatory approach
In Manitoba, South-east Asians, Africans, South Asians, Latin Americans, Black people, Filipinos and North American Indigenous peoples shoulder the burden of COVID‑19 infections compared to their White counterparts. According to the Government of Manitoba’s 2021 Race, Ethnicity and Indigeneity (REI) Analysis Report Wave Three, lower income racialized people were most likely to live in overcrowded and/or inadequate housing, which is the most common acquisition setting. Such overcrowding characterizes the living arrangements of many migrant workers in Manitoba. Earlier REI data showed that BIPOC individuals, particularly migrant workers, were more likely to be employed in higher-risk occupational settings, including food processing and food services, manufacturing and transportation, homecare work and farming. Although we are beginning to better understand the vulnerability of migrant workers to COVID‑19 infections in Canada, there exists a major knowledge gap around vaccine confidence in this population. For this reason, we aim to strengthen vaccine confidence among temporary foreign workers in Manitoba by examining it within the wider structural context of inequality. Drawing upon a partnership between the migrant workers’ rights organization, Migrante, and the University of Manitoba Institute for Global Public Health, we will pursue two objectives. Objective 1: to generate new knowledge on “vaccine confidence” that sheds light on systems of inequality within the Temporary Foreign Worker Program. Objective 2: to build a community-owned database that can guide Migrante’s efforts to enhance vaccine uptake among temporary foreign workers. This approach to data justice will sharpen the focus of Migrante’s ongoing health advocacy work by enabling them to generate and follow key health indicators, geographic coverage targets, and COVID‑19 vaccine uptake among temporary foreign workers in Manitoba.
