With the largest-ever vaccination drive on the horizon, the Ad Council is stepping up with one of the most significant public education campaigns in American history, aiming to raise tens of millions of dollars from the private sector to fund coronavirus vaccine education and awareness efforts.
In light of promising vaccine results published this month by Pfizer, Moderna and now AstraZeneca, the nonprofit Ad Council has partnered with the COVID Collaborative, an assembly of bipartisan health, education and policy leaders, announcing today their intention to undertake the sweeping challenge of getting Americans vaccinated en masse against the new virus.
To fund its national awareness bid, the Ad Council has set an initial goal of raising at least $50 million from the private sector, tapping both corporations and philanthropic donors to contribute on an ongoing basis.
“Widespread adoption of the COVID-19 vaccine is our generation’s ‘moonshot’ and will represent one of the largest public health interventions in our nation’s history,” says Ad Council President and CEO Lisa Sherman, who believes “hundreds of thousands of lives” in the U.S. can still be saved with an effective information campaign.
Perhaps the most prominent hurdle the Ad Council is facing is Americans’ skepticism about the efficacy of a potential vaccine for COVID-19—a disease that has killed more than 250,000 people across the country to date.