Mariano Votta

Director Active Citizenship Network, Italy

Abstract Title: Grassroots Mobilisation: Leveraging Civil Society and Community Leadership to Bridge Gaps in Vaccine Coverage

Biography: Mariano Votta is responsible for EU Affairs at the Italian NGO Cittadinanzattiva and Director of its EU branch “Active Citizenship Network”. Passionate about health & consumer issues, Mariano has 25 years of experience in advocacy, stakeholder engagement, communication, European Public Affairs & EU funded-projects. Mariano holds a Degree in Political Science and two post-graduate master’s degrees in European Public Relations and Corporate Social Responsibility. He is also a journalist with more than 50 publications in international peer-reviewed journals. He led the political initiative to launch in 2015 at the EU Parliament the Interest Group “EU Patients’ Rights & Cross-Border Healthcare,” – now at its third mandate - endorsed by more than 100 organisations across Europe and dozens of Members of the European Parliament. In 2016 Mariano won the Efhre International University Excellence Awards on patients’ rights.

Research Interest: Grassroots Mobilisation: Leveraging Civil Society and Community Leadership to Bridge Gaps in Vaccine Coverage The WHO has defined community engagement as “a process of developing relationships that enable stakeholders to work together to address health related issues and promote well being to achieve positive health impact and outcomes” and it underlines the “Community and civil society engagement” as a pillar of its “Global Action Plan for Healthy Lives and Well-being for All”. On December 5, 2023, on the occasion of the adoption by the European Commission of the EU4Health 2024 work program to implement key health policy priorities within the European Health Union, Stella Kyriakides, European Commissioner for Health and Food Safety, said that “Civil society has a crucial role to play in reaching out to our citizens”. Recently, on the occasion of the G7 Ministers’ Meeting on Health held on 9/11 Oct. 2024 in Ancona (Italy), global leaders emphasis that “vaccination is an essential preventive measure and reiterate the crucial role of routine immunisation and campaigns”, higlihting “the importance of raising awareness and involving the general population by providing evidence-based information through campaigns aimed at citizens’ empowerment and increasing health literacy regarding prevention, research and care”. In concrete way, the aim of the presentation is to show how the so-called intermediated bodies of the society, when recognized as a stakeholder, can play an active role in support of public policy on vaccionation. Around this goal, the Vaccination Informal Platform (V.I.P.) for life-course immunization promotion, a collective of leaders of patient and citizen organizations across Europe promoted by Active Citizenship Network, has united with the desire to strengthen the exchange of experiences among the many expressions of active citizenship working to support public vaccination policies. The ultimate goal is to update a narrative that, when it comes to vaccination, almost never refers to the active role of Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) and Patient Advocacy Groups (PAGs), instead focusing mainly on hesitant or even hostile attitudes toward vaccines, which, though present, do not represent the whole picture. There are many of actors from the intermediated bodies of the society that can play a constructive role with institutional and non-institutional stakeholders, as well as act as a driving force for other organizations, and there are different typologies of initiatives to testify their activist on vaccination arena