Call for applications to the Immunization Partnership Fund: Application process and requirements
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Key requirements
To meet our selection criteria, applicants must demonstrate how their proposed activities will work to build vaccine confidence and uptake and reduce barriers to vaccination among one or more of the identified priority populations.
There are 4 categories of key requirements:
- Program objectives
- Priority populations
- Core program principles
- Applicant capacity
Applicants must meet requirements described in all sections.
A. Program objectives
Projects must align with at least one of these program objectives.
Objective 1: Develop and implement community-centered vaccination education, promotion, and/or outreach activities that aim to improve vaccine literacy and vaccine confidence, and/or reduce barriers to vaccination among priority populations.
Activities aligning with this objective may include:
- Developing or adapting innovative approaches to improve vaccine confidence and uptake.
- Building and using trust-based relationships and partnerships and implementing best or wise practices to support vaccine literacy and confidence in priority populations.
- Working with communities or partners to identify barriers to vaccination and removing or reducing them.
- Delivering tailored interventions to build vaccine or health literacy, including digital health literacy, to help people access, understand, and appraise information to support vaccine decision-making and reduce the impact and spread of misinformation and disinformation.
- Engaging in strategic communications, outreach, and public engagement initiatives to build and support partnerships and networks to establish dialogue about vaccines and the sustainable exchange of trustworthy information.
Objective 2: Build the capacity of healthcare service providers or related organizations to better serve priority populations by increasing access to vaccination, providing positive vaccination experiences, sharing easy to understand and tailored information on vaccination, and/or providing effective counselling to vaccine hesitant individuals.
Activities aligning with this objective may include:
- Developing and deploying tools, training, and accurate educational materials on vaccination across the life course tailored to the needs of priority populations.
- Developing and deploying evidence-based and creative approaches to support the delivery of vaccinations across the life course.
- Developing initiatives to introduce or improve cultural safety in vaccination spaces or among vaccinators.
- Developing tools, training, and evidence-based information for healthcare providers and allied health professionals to:
- build their own vaccine literacy
- provide accurate information and effectively counsel individuals on vaccination
Organizations included in this objective may include:
- public health authorities
- community health centres
- health professional organizations
- other organizations whose staff, members, or stakeholders engage in providing vaccinations, educating on, or promoting vaccination with a focus on those serving priority populations
B. Priority populations
The Immunization Partnership Fund identifies priority populations as those that:
- show gaps in vaccination coverage
- have higher rates of vaccine hesitancy
- are at higher risk for serious outcomes from vaccine-preventable diseases
- face systemic or structural barriers to accessing vaccination and thus may not be effectively reached through traditional public health methods
To be eligible for funding through this process, projects must focus on at least one of the following priority populations:
- Indigenous Peoples
- Non-Indigenous ethnocultural, racialized, linguistic, and/or religious minorities
- Populations who face systemic or structural barriers to vaccination. These may include:
- people living on low incomes
- the precariously housed
- people experiencing homelessness
- people with substance use disorders
- people with chronic conditions or disabilities
- 2SLGBTQIA+ people
- People who are pregnant
Provincial and territorial immunization schedules recommend vaccines throughout the life course. Most vaccine recommendations are for children, youth, pregnant individuals, and seniors. Special consideration should be given to these subgroups within the priority populations, in particular to parents and caregivers of children and youth.
C. Core program principles
To be successful, applicants must demonstrate how their proposed projects will uphold these 3 core principles.
Principle 1: Culturally safe
Cultural safety is an outcome based on respectful engagement that recognizes and strives to address power imbalances inherent in society and the healthcare system. It results in an environment free of racism and discrimination, where people feel safe when accessing services and healthcare.
Applicants must:
- demonstrate knowledge and understanding of cultural factors relevant to their project
- integrate cultural safety into the proposed project's design, implementation and evaluation
Principle 2: Equity-promoting
We're committed to promoting equity and reducing health inequities by:
- addressing the systemic barriers that impede equitable assess to vaccines
- improving access to tailored educational resources to priority populations facing health inequity in Canada
Applicants must demonstrate understanding and consideration of the social determinants of health and their impact on the priority populations their project is addressing.
Principle 3: Evidence-informed
Evidence-informed initiatives are based on programs, projects, and interventions that have been demonstrated to be effective based on:
- objective research
- best or wise practices
Outcomes are clearly linked to program activities themselves, and not to unrelated outside events.
Proposals will need to include evidence to show:
- that it's possible to achieve your intended outcomes
- how the project will meet the needs of the priority population it serves
Evidence can include:
- Indigenous ways of knowing
- community-based knowledge
- peer-reviewed research and grey literature from disciplines such as:
- epidemiology
- social sciences
- health promotion
Sometimes evidence to support a proposal's effectiveness may not exist (for example, because the intervention is new or exploratory). In this case, your proposal must be based on clearly articulated and plausible theories, including logic models and established theories of change.
D. Applicant capacity
Applicants must demonstrate that their organization, partners and collaborators have the necessary resources, experience and knowledge to implement the project within its budget and timelines.
We encourage applicants to use collaborative partnerships to add capacity to the project. If you receive funding, you will need to sustain these partnerships from the proposal's development stage through to its implementation and evaluation.
Who can apply
Canadian organizations which fall under one or more of these categories may apply:
- Not-for-profit organizations and/or not-for-profit corporations
- Not-for-profit incorporated groups, associations, societies or coalitions
- Provincial, territorial, regional and municipal governments or agencies
- Organizations and/or institutions supported by provincial and territorial governments, such as:
- schools
- regional health authorities
- post-secondary institutions
- First Nations, Inuit, Métis and other Indigenous organizations
PHAC recognizes the importance of supporting distinctions-based Indigenous-led programming. Projects reaching First Nations, Inuit, or Métis populations as a primary audience should be led by distinctions-based Indigenous organizations or by organizations that can provide evidence of meaningful and culturally safe collaboration with the First Nations, Inuit, or Métis community they intend to serve through their project.
Organizations that are currently receiving funding from the Immunization Partnership Fund are eligible to apply for this process. Your proposed project may be new, or it may build upon a project that the program:
- currently funds
- has previously funded
You must still follow all of the steps of this application process and meet all of our key requirements for your project to be considered.
If your proposal includes further distributing funds to community level organizations through micro-contributions, your organization must:
- have a national or regional scope
- demonstrate capacity and experience in carrying out such activities
Ineligible applicants
These organizations are not eligible to submit a proposal:
- For-profit organizations and/or for-profit corporations
- Unincorporated groups, societies and coalitions
- Federal government departments, agencies and Crown corporations
- International organizations, corporations, groups, societies and coalitions
In addition, we will not fund proposals from:
- individuals
- organizations of any type seeking core funding for ongoing operations
We do not fund standalone activities, such as:
- research
- symposia
- workshops
- conferences
- audio-visual productions
We only provide funding for these activities if they're part of a broader project.
Application process
This call for applications is a 2-step process.
Step 1
Email us to request an application package. It will include an applicant guide with instructions and a template for your letter of intent. Use the subject line: Funding Application Request – [Organization name] – Immunization Partnership Fund.
Your email must include both addresses in the "to" line:
The completed letter of intent must:
- provide a description of the proposed project
- outline how the organization and project meet each of the eligibility and key requirements outlined in this call for applications
The letter of intent gives applicants an opportunity to describe their proposed projects. We use the letters of intent to decide which proposed projects best align with the program's goals and key requirements before asking for full funding proposals.
Email us your completed letter of intent, including both addresses in the "to" line:
Use the subject line: LOI Submission – [Organization name] – Immunization Partnership Fund.
You must submit your letter of intent by no later than November 10, 2023, at 2:00 pm EST. You will receive confirmation of receipt within 10 business days.
We are not able to provide updates on the status of your application following submission. This ensures that we protect the fairness and guidelines of this competitive process.
After reviewing and assessing the letters of intent we receive, we'll contact you to:
- invite you to apply to step 2 of the process or
- inform you that your application was unsuccessful
Our decisions regarding which applicants may proceed to the next step are final and not open to appeal.
Step 2
If you proceed to step 2 of the process, you'll need to send us:
- a detailed budget and activities for your project
- a complete funding proposal using the template we provide
You will receive detailed instructions on what is required for this step.
You must submit your proposal and budget by no later than January 31, 2024, at 2:00 pm EST. Note that this date is subject to change.
After reviewing and assessing the proposals we receive, we'll contact you to let you know if you were successful or not. Our decisions regarding which applicants are successful are final and not open to appeal.