Kate Hopkins

Dr.  Kate Hopkins oversees research programs across Sabin’s diverse portfolio of vaccination acceptance, demand, and service delivery. Through collaborative mixed-methods research, she generates evidence-based, cost-effective, and community-responsive solutions to increase vaccine confidence and uptake and optimize immunization service delivery for diverse populations and settings across low- and middle-income countries.

Hopkins has more than 15 years of demonstrated leadership and project execution, including having managed local, multi-country and transdisciplinary research teams. Her expertise includes translating evidence into actionable strategies that drive policy, programs, and real-world impact. Research-informed outputs and outcomes have included social and behavioral change communication interventions, strengthened health worker capacity, and enhanced process flow for mass vaccination campaigns. She is experienced in building strong partnerships for collaborative and strategic impact within Africa and Asia.

At Sabin, Kate heads up the Vaccine Acceptance and Delivery team, which oversees the Vaccination Acceptance Research Network (VARN) Online Community and the Social and Behavioral Research Coalition. The latter includes five cohorts of partners that have conducted rapid community assessments and piloted and evaluated strategies to increase immunization acceptance and uptake across 19 countries; with key learnings feeding into VARN. Current projects include Sabin’s Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance-funded Hexavalent Vaccine Switch Assessment Project and the Malaria Vaccine Program Learning Agenda. Hopkins also serves on Gavi’s Measles-containing Vaccine Presentation Switch Assessment Project Steering Committee and the GlaxoSmithKline (GSK)-Save the Children Zero-dose and Under-immunized Children Partnership Technical Advisory Committee.

Prior to Sabin, Hopkins spent 11 years living and working in sub-Saharan Africa conducting psychosocial-behavioral research and health service program implementation, with particular focus on high-risk and vulnerable populations. For nine years she was a joint-faculty researcher for the faculty of Health Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa; and taught an operational research course within a post-graduate diploma program offered by the University of Cape Town. She has over 30 peer-reviewed publications.

Hopkins earned her Master in Public Health in International Health and Epidemiology from Boston University and a PhD in Public Health from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Some of her publications include:

• How Local Communities Shaped the “Cranky Uncle Vaccines” Game | Vaccines Today
• Co-Designing a Mobile-Based Game to Improve Misinformation Resistance and Vaccine Knowledge in Uganda, Kenya, and Rwanda – PubMed
• Community-Based Approaches to Increase COVID-19 Vaccine Uptake and Demand: Lessons Learned from Four UNICEF-Supported Interventions – PubMed
• Shaping global vaccine acceptance with localized knowledge: a report from the inaugural VARN2022 conference – PubMed
• Building a way forward: Enabling community voices to forge the path toward successful immunization for all – PubMed
• The second annual Vaccination Acceptance Research Network Conference (VARN2023): Shifting the immunization narrative to center equity and community expertise – PubMed 

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