Community-Driven Solutions and Gender-Responsive Strategies to Overcome Immunization Barriers in High-Burden Areas of Northern Nigeria

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This panel explores how SBCC can be reimagined to dismantle persistent barriers preventing children from receiving their first dose of Penta vaccine, a key marker of inequity. Nigeria accounts for the world's largest zero-dose population, with an estimated 2.1 million children excluded from immunization, below the national target of 80% coverage. The challenge is most acute in the North, where sociocultural barriers require transformative strategies. 

Anchored in the Summit theme of "The Power of Connection, this panel contributes to the sub-theme of "Connection and Relationships". The objective is to demonstrate how approaches rooted in connection and relationships can overcome entrenched barriers by reframing leadership as shared, communication as relational, and solutions as co-created.

Across four abstracts, the panel will: a) Document entrenched barriers to immunization, such as women's limited decision-making power and male-dominated norms, compounded by low literacy, poverty, and weak health system readiness, showing why conventional top-down awareness campaigns remain inadequate; b) Showcase evidence-driven, gender-responsive approaches that reposition vaccination as a shared household responsibility and tailor interventions to community realities; c) Highlight adaptive, community-driven learning models that embed cycles of design, testing, and refinement, ensuring interventions remain relevant and sustainable; and d) Explore strategies for male engagement and peer-to-peer learning that build trust, accountability, and collaboration, diffusing promising practices while linking community realities with system responsiveness. 

Together, these contributions illustrate that achieving zero-dose equity requires moving beyond information delivery toward approaches grounded in trust, reciprocity, and collective voice.