Facebook Announces New Tools to Help Vaccinate Santa Barbara County

With COVID-19 vaccine appointments opening up to people with disabilities and underlying health conditions this week in Santa Barbara County, many Californians are eager to determine their eligibility and reserve their spot in line. According to Carnegie Mellon and Facebook’s Data For Good Symptom Survey, 81.2% of Santa Barbara County residents would choose to receive a COVID vaccine if it were offered to them today. To help, Facebook is announcing new tools to help increase vaccination rates with Californians.  

These new tools come as Facebook announces they are committed to helping vaccinate 50 million people against COVID-19. New features include: 

• Vaccine Finder Tool: To help find where and when you can get a COVID-19 vaccine, Facebook is partnering with Boston Children’s Hospital to launch a Vaccine Finder tool that helps users find nearby locations that offer the vaccine. Starting today, users can search for vaccine locations and make an appointment directly from their News Feeds. In the coming weeks, users will also be able to see whether the locations nearest to them have vaccines available. See visuals here. 
• Vaccinated Profile Picture Frame: Research shows that social norms can have a major impact on attitudes and behaviors related to health, so in partnership with the CDC, Facebook is launching new profile picture frame options so users can show their support for COVID-19 vaccines, as well as tools to share with friends and family that they have been vaccinated.
• Vaccine Trends: Providing public officials with real-time aggregate trends in COVID-19 vaccinations, intent to get vaccinated, and reasons for hesitancy to inform equitable vaccine rollout.
• Partner Credits: Providing partners with enough ad credits to reach nearly everyone on Facebook and Instagram with critical messaging on COVID-19.
• Crowdtangle Display: Facebook is also making it easy to track how COVID-19 vaccine information is being spread on social media through CrowdTangle’s COVID-19 Live Displays. Publishers, global aid organizations, journalists and others can access real-time, global streams of vaccine-related posts on Facebook, Instagram and Reddit in 34 languages.

Facebook is promoting these tools to Californians according to vaccine eligibility, including age, occupation, and location based on the user’s profile information. As vaccine eligibility expands, these products will be promoted to more and more people.