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The rise of major complex public health problems, such as vaccination hesitancy and access to vaccination, requires innovative, open, and transdisciplinary approaches. Yet, institutional silos and lack of participation on the part of nonacademic citizens in the design of solutions hamper efforts to meet these challenges. Against this background, new solutions have been explored, with participatory research, citizen science, hackathons, and challenge-based approaches being applied in the context of public health.
Our aim was to develop a program for creating citizen science and open innovation projects that address the contemporary challenges of vaccination in France and around the globe.
We designed and implemented Co-Immune, a program created to tackle the question of vaccination hesitancy and access to vaccination through an online and offline challenge-based open innovation approach. The program was run on the open science platform Just One Giant Lab.
Over a 6-month period, the Co-Immune program gathered 234 participants of diverse backgrounds and 13 partners from the public and private sectors. The program comprised 10 events to facilitate the creation of 20 new projects, as well as the continuation of two existing projects, to address the issues of vaccination hesitancy and access, ranging from app development and data mining to analysis and game design. In an open framework, the projects made their data, code, and solutions publicly available.
Co-Immune highlights how open innovation approaches and online platforms can help to gather and coordinate noninstitutional communities in a rapid, distributed, and global way toward solving public health issues. Such initiatives can lead to the production and transfer of knowledge, creating novel solutions in the public health sector. The example of Co-Immune contributes to paving the way for organizations and individuals to collaboratively tackle future global challenges.
As the world faces a rise in the number of complex challenges that threaten the resilience of our economic, environmental, social, and health systems, we observe a shift toward more collaboration and openness in the way science and innovation is performed [
Immunization is one of the most cost-effective interventions to protect oneself and others from infectious diseases [
Yet, the annual death toll for vaccine-preventable diseases stands at 1.5 million, and large gaps in coverage persist, not only between countries but also within their territories [
In response, the WHO Global Vaccine Action Plan 2011-2020 [
Global health guidelines showcase the positive outcomes of social participation for universal health coverage [
Citizen science is an emerging and highly diverse practice that can be broadly defined as the general public being involved in the process of doing research [
Other approaches to create and develop knowledge and solutions to complex challenges are slowly entering the mainstream. In particular, hackathons, challenge-based approaches, and the participation of citizens in science have been flourishing over the last two decades [
Hackathons are short, intensive, and collaborative events that are designed to prototype solutions addressing a specific problem. They originated in the early 2000s in digital and tech fields and have been adapted to address more complex challenges in global health [
Challenge-based approaches, which provide frameworks for learning while solving real-world issues, have also been on the rise in global health and have proven to be efficient for generating innovative solutions and for incentivizing mass community engagement [
Despite the numerous tools and technologies created to facilitate collaboration in citizen science projects, challenges remain. These include the issues of the complementarity, coherence, and diffusion of these initiatives [
Therefore, the promotion of transdisciplinarity and citizen science in an open innovation framework, coupled with methods such as hackathons, and a challenge-based approach represent an opportunity to address current complex challenges of vaccination that would overcome the limits of either solution alone. In this paper, we describe the design, implementation, and outputs of Co-Immune, a collaborative open innovation program that was run in 2019 to address vaccination hesitancy and access to vaccination.
Co-Immune’s aim was to develop an environment that favors the creation and development of citizen science and open innovation projects addressing the contemporary challenges of vaccination in France and around the globe. This program had four specific objectives: (1) to foster a collaborative, open, and transdisciplinary dynamic; (2) to promote the emergence of accessible knowledge and innovative solutions; (3) to support participants in the elaboration and development of their project; and (4) to disseminate the outputs and results in an open science framework. In this study, we describe the methodology of Co-Immune and its implementation, and we present its key outcomes.
The overall program duration was 10 months (March 2019 to January 2020), divided into 6 months of preparation and 4 months of rollout of activities that included offline and online events, support for the development of citizen science projects, and assessment and awards for projects participating in the challenge-based competition. The main outputs of the program were projects, categorized as leading to (1) knowledge production, if they performed data analysis or generated new knowledge, whether it was context specific, generic [
Co-Immune was coordinated online through the JOGL platform [
The governance of Co-Immune was designed to provide freedom for projects to develop innovative solutions while ensuring their compliance with local and international regulations and consideration of ethical and scientific integrity. To this end, we constituted the independent Committee for Ethics, Science and Impact (CESI), which issued an opinion on the rules of participation in the program and validated the strategic orientation of the program. Public health priorities were identified based on a literature review and divided between two main challenges to streamline participants’ work: vaccination coverage and vaccination hesitancy. They were then validated by the CESI. In addition, through a series of semistructured interviews, experts at the 7th Fondation Merieux Vaccine Acceptance conference [
To be eligible for a prize, a project was required to have created a comprehensive description of their initiative on the JOGL platform and a video pitch. This material was provided to experts in charge of the assessment.
Participants were recruited through our network of partners from around the globe and social media communication. Participation was open to everyone above the age of 18 years, if they had agreed to follow the participation rules validated by the CESI. Participants could take the role of “project leader” or “contributor.”
Co-Immune participants used the JOGL platform to document their projects and recruit collaborators throughout the course of the program. JOGL is a decentralized mobilization platform designed for use in collaborative research and innovation (
Overview of the Just One Giant Lab (JOGL) platform. The image on the left is a screenshot of the JOGL platform. The right-hand image is a heatmap of feature presence across popular online tools. For each platform (columns), we numerically encoded the presence (1) or absence (0) of each feature (rows). Then, for each element, we computed a Z score by standardizing values across platforms, represented here by the color spectrum: blue (low) to red (high). CBPP: citizen-based peer production network (ie, citizen science platform); CV: curriculum vitae; Je-S: Joint Electronic Submissions; MNI: Montreal Neurological Institute; OSF: Open Science Framework; RSB: Royal Society of Biology.
The Co-Immune program was realized through an interrelated and interacting set of technological and social features (
Workflow of the Co-Immune program design. JOGL: Just One Giant Lab.
To build the community, we contacted organizations involved in a wide range of domains before the launch of the program, thereby creating a first pool of contributing professionals and students. We also recruited participants via the organization of events, typically in the evening, aimed at creating projects, fostering collaboration among participants to address project needs, and providing mentorship. To facilitate the coordination of the community, all participants were required to use the JOGL platform to describe their projects, form teams, list their needs, and initiate collaboration.
In order to create a supportive and collaborative environment for the participants, we reached out to various organizations to establish partnerships. Our intention was two-fold: (1) to facilitate the participation of the organizations’ students and employees as participants or mentors by involving their institution and (2) to enhance the sustainability of projects after the course of the program by connecting them with potential partners at the early stage of their development.
The 13 partners operated in the health, technology, and social sectors, and included research, innovation, and education organizations, as well as professional networks, incubators, and communication specialists (
We organized 10 offline and online events between October and December 2019 (
The facilitation of the hackathon-style events relied on the use of participatory and collective intelligence design and problem-solving techniques [
Three partners in Paris—Epitech, the Wild Code School, and the Center for Research and Interdisciplinarity (CRI)—co-organized and hosted events for their students, respectively, in their engineering, coding, and life science and education schools. Other partners—Kap Code, Excelya, and CorrelAid—mobilized their teams to act as mentors during these events. A total of 14 mentors attended events, and five came to more than one event.
In addition, we organized four 1-hour online events. The first was an opportunity to share information about Co-Immune with people around the globe. Another event discussed best practices to document open science projects. Finally, two events focused on the resolution of needs of single projects (
Treemap representing the domains of action of the 13 Co-Immune partners.
Co-Immune events.
Name | Mode; type; location | Duration (hours), n | Objective | Design; supporting partners (if applicable) | Participants, n |
Launch | Offline; ceremony; CRIa, Paris | 3 | Gather the initial community | Presentation of the program design, features, timeline, and partners, as well as networking | 60 |
OpenJOGLb; Co-Immune | Online | 1 | Q&Ac session on the program | Presentation of Co-Immune and questions and answers | 3 |
Sprint; open data | Offline; hackathon; CRI, Paris | 2.5 | Build community, create projects, and create data repositories | Statement of the problem (videos of experts), team formation and effort, mentoring, and publication of results on the JOGL platform; supported by CRI and CorrelAid | 25 |
OpenJOGL; Vaccination Awareness Escape Game [ |
Online | 1 | Foster collaboration around single projects | Pitch of the project and its needs, feedback from experts, and questions and answers | 7 |
Sprint; project creation | Offline; hackathon; CRI, Paris | 4 | Build community and create multidisciplinary projects | Statement of the problem (videos of experts), ice breaker, multidisciplinary team formation and effort, mentoring, presentation of results, vote for the most promising projects, publication of results on the JOGL platform, and networking; supported by CRI, Epitech, Wild Code School, CorrelAid, and Excelya | 22 |
Sprint; open data | Offline; hackathon; Wild Code School, Paris | 3 | Accelerate the development of projects related to data science | Selection of a project by participants among the two choices available, team formation and effort, mentoring, presentation of results, publication on the JOGL platform, and networking; supported by Wild Code School, CorrelAid, and Excelya | 15 |
Sprint; open data | Offline; hackathon; Epitech, Paris | 3 | Build the community, create projects, and accelerate the development of one project using Twitter data | Statement of the problem, selection of a project by participants among the four choices available (including one already existing project), team formation and effort, mentoring, presentation of results, vote for the most promising project, publication of results on the JOGL platform, and networking; supported by Epitech, Kap Code, Excelya, and CorrelAid | 35 |
OpenJOGL; HERAd: A Health Platform for Refugees [ |
Online | 1 | Foster collaboration around single projects | Pitch of the project and its needs, feedback from experts, and questions and answers | 7 |
OpenJOGL; better documentation for better collaboration | Online | 1 | Help teams document their projects in the most open and reproducible way | Expert presentation on best practices for documenting open science projects, presentation of Co-Immune expectations for documentation, and questions and answers | 13 |
Closing ceremony | Offline; ceremony; CRI, Paris | 2 | Close the Co-Immune program | Presentation of the main outputs of the program and awards for the best projects | 70 |
aCRI: Center for Research and Interdisciplinarity.
bJOGL: Just One Giant Lab.
cQ&A: question and answer.
dHERA: Health Recording App.
Individuals who were considered “experts” included all the CESI members as well as experienced professionals of a certain field who attended events and provided technical guidance to teams as “mentors.”
The CESI members were sought to represent the diversity of stakeholders involved in advancing access to vaccines and reducing vaccine hesitancy. By choosing interviewees who were researchers specializing in the challenges of access to vaccines and vaccination hesitancy, we aimed at benefiting from their expert understanding of the issues and of the priorities to be addressed to streamline the work of participants around particular problems. Finally, we grew the pool of mentors over the span of the program to best match their expertise with the needs of the projects in an agile manner.
Overall, the mentors’ domains of expertise ranged from biology to social sciences, design, technology, and data science (
The CESI consisted of eight volunteer members and included virologists, pharmacists, health economists, experts in the digital sciences and ethics fields, and biologists; members were working at international, national, and local levels of the health system. All of them worked for public or nonprofit organizations. Interviewees were mostly researchers in social sciences and medical practitioners.
Treemap of the 31 Co-Immune experts: domains of expertise (left) and affiliations (right).
The assessment of projects by experts was designed to be an opportunity for learning and growth. To be assessed, teams were asked to provide a video pitch summarizing their project and detailed documentation on their project page on the JOGL platform, including links to their open access data and code. Project assessment was performed through a grid that was codeveloped by JOGL and the CESI. In addition to grades, teams received detailed feedback on their projects.
The assessment grid was based on a literature review of project evaluation standards and consisted of 10 questions graded from 0 to 5 (
Participants added their professional background, skills, and employment status to the JOGL platform. These data were used to evaluate the composition of the community. All users who joined JOGL during the span of the program were considered to be participants of Co-Immune, as it was the only ongoing program, and all outreach activities were related to it.
To better understand how skills were related across participants, we used a network approach to assess similarity between skills and to get further insights about the global diversity of the community. In this network approach, each declared skill was a node and the skills were considered linked if they co-occurred in a participant. Links were then weighted by the number of participants within which they co-occurred. Gephi 0.9.2 was used to represent the network shown in the skill map of the Co-Immune community, and the modularity algorithm was used with default parameters to compute communities representing the sets of skills that tend to co-occur more together than with other skills. Since these skills are linked through the participants who share them, they can be understood as "participant types" constitutive of the Co-Immune community.
We provide the data related to this study on Zenodo [
During the program, 234 participants signed up to the platform (
Growth of the number of participants (left) and number of projects (right) over the life span of the program. Dashed bars show when events for community facilitation where held (green: offline events; blue: online events; red: kickoff meeting). Blue lines give a linear fit during the corresponding periods, showing stable growth pre- and postkickoff.
Out of the 234 participants, 187 (79.9%) declared their job category. The community was composed of a mix of students (67/187, 35.8%) and workers (94/187, 50.3%), most of whom worked full time (81/94, 86%;
The 234 participants specified a total of 492 unique skills (median 3 [IQR 4.5] skills per participant). We observed a high representation of data science and coding alongside biology, which, altogether, related to the technical skills emphasized during the program (
An overview over the Co-Immune community: participant categories (left) and the 20 most represented skills (right) in the Co-Immune community.
Skill map of the Co-Immune community. Skills are linked if they appear in the profile of the same participant. Link weight indicates the number of participants sharing the skills. Node size indicates weighted degree.
A total of 22 projects were created by 20 project leads, with teams of up to 11 members (
Among the 15 projects relying on software technology, 11 (73%) aimed at contributing to the production of knowledge by facilitating the analysis of publicly available data; they did this via the use of parsing tools and the creation of repositories (n=3), the analysis of open data (n=3), the development of machine learning tools to extract and analyze Twitter data related to vaccination hesitancy (n=2), and the production of data visualizations (n=3). In particular, more than 40 data sets were identified and collected by 4 projects that were created during the data-centered events. In addition, a database of 2464 tweets, in French, posted over a period of 7 years was made available by a partner, and another data set of 89,979 tweets was gathered by the project Qualitative Analysis of Tweets on Vaccination [
Out of the 15 projects above, 4 (27%) used software for knowledge transfer; for instance, the HERA (Health Recording App) project [
A total of 5 projects out of 22 (23%) focused on different interventions (
Co-Immune project descriptions.
Project name | Project status | Solution category | Summary description |
HERAa: A Health Platform for Refugees [ |
Assessedb Awarded Grand prize Best approach prize Best impact strategy prize |
Software Knowledge transfer |
A mobile health app designed for improving the monitoring of vaccination and perinatal health of Syrian refugees in Turkey; it provides recall of vaccines, storage of health data, health promotion (educational content), and financial incentives for immunization |
Qualitative Analysis of Tweets on Vaccination [ |
Assessed Awarded Partner prize |
Software Knowledge production |
A web-based platform providing real-time visualization and analysis of tweets related to vaccination and vaccination hesitancy; data analysis included sentiment analysis and network analysis; an area of development was the development of predictive models of epidemic occurrence based on Twitter data |
Commit to Get Vacc & to Promote Vaccination – HEROIC Santé [ |
Assessed Awarded Best implementation strategy prize |
Intervention Knowledge transfer |
A short questionnaire (7 minutes) using engagement approaches from the human and social sciences, such as “the importance of the source,” “voluntary consent,” or “fear and danger management,” to engage health care professionals and users, not only to be vaccinated against the flu, but also to promote flu vaccination |
Project APRICOTc [ |
Assessed Awarded Partner prize |
Hardware |
Development of a synthetic biology–based methodology that addresses the evasion mechanisms adopted by the mycobacterium tuberculosis and induces the acceleration of lysosomal biogenesis to improve antigen presentation |
Vaccination Awareness Escape Game [ |
Assessed Not awarded |
Intervention Knowledge transfer |
An escape game to raise vaccination awareness among the general population |
Harmonize Vaccination [ |
Assessed Not awarded |
Software Knowledge production |
A tool for parsing various formats of vaccination coverage data sets and for visualizing them on a common platform |
Pass It On: A Game About Vaccine Hesitancy [ |
Assessed Not awarded |
Software Knowledge transfer |
A role-play video game aiming to improve the capacity of health professionals to respond to their patients’ hesitation to be vaccinated |
Global Vaccination Risk Assessment [ |
Assessed Not awarded |
Software Knowledge production |
A tool to create an overview of risk factors of “not getting vaccinated,” by country, while looking at the more comprehensive picture; the methodology of this project is based on fuzzy logic, multi-criterion analysis, and the risk triangle |
Immuno [ |
Not assessedd |
Hardware Knowledge transfer |
A board game providing access to the general public’s understanding of medical sciences related to immunization |
Vaccine DataDump [ |
Not assessed |
Software Knowledge production |
A vaccination-related data repository and analysis tool for quick analysis of vaccine-related issues |
Measuring Vaccination Hesitancy From Social Media [ |
Not assessed |
Software Knowledge production |
Data analysis of social media (ie, Twitter) to examine whether negative sentiment related to vaccination precedes declaration of symptoms and to study the relationship between vaccination hesitancy and epidemiological outbreaks |
Mortality According to Access to Vaccines [ |
Not assessed |
Software Knowledge production |
Data analysis exploring the link between immunization coverage, mortality rate, and distance from health centers |
The Health System Matrices [ |
Not assessed |
Software Knowledge production |
Exploratory analysis of the various parameters influencing vaccination coverage over time |
Meta Immune – Data Exploration of Existing DB [ |
Not assessed |
Software Knowledge production |
A data lake on immunization data |
Bilobae [ |
Not assessed |
Intervention |
An intervention incentivizing people to increase vaccine uptake through vouchers, supporting the existing mobile app Biloba |
Wakuchin Senshi [ |
Not assessed |
Intervention Knowledge transfer |
An interactive role-play board game to increase awareness about vaccination among the general population |
Neutralizing Information About Vaccines [ |
Not assessed |
Software Knowledge transfer |
An algorithm for parsing web pages, identifying misinformation, and identifying trustworthy content to help users in their health decisions related to vaccines; this also aims to be used by search engines in their recommender systems |
Go Viral! [ |
Not assessed |
Intervention Knowledge transfer |
A communication campaign on social media using gamification methods to illustrate contagion among users and, thereby, increase awareness of the importance of vaccines |
Make Vaccines Affordable [ |
Not assessed |
Software Knowledge transfer |
A web-based portal with data related to population demand for care in order to negotiate prices of vaccines with suppliers |
Identify Topics of Discussion in Vaccination Posts [ |
Not assessed |
Software Knowledge production |
Analysis of discussion in vaccination-related posts on Twitter and their evolution over time |
Detect Vaccine Administration in Social Media Patient Data [ |
Not assessed |
Software Knowledge production |
A classifier able to detect vaccine administration in tweets related to vaccination |
Detect Vaccine Hesitancy in Social Media Patient Data [ |
Not assessed |
Software Knowledge production |
A classifier able to detect vaccine hesitancy in tweets related to vaccination |
aHERA: Health Recording App.
bThese were projects that were assessed by experts at the end of the program. To be assessed by a pool of experts, the project team needed to provide detailed documentation of their project, provide a short video pitch, and deposit their data and code on the Just One Giant Lab (JOGL) platform.
cAPRICOT: Antigen Presentation Using Crispr for TB.
dThese were projects that were not assessed by experts at the end of the program because they did not provide sufficient documentation.
eThe Biloba project, which was not part of Co-Immune, was used as a base to create the team’s own project, as the Biloba founder was a mentor during this event.
Out of 22 projects, 7 (32%) provided sufficient documentation on JOGL to be assessed by the pool of independent experts. In total, 27 reviews were performed, yielding scores ranging from 18 to 32.8 out of a possible total of 45 across the different dimensions that were assessed (ie, approach, implementation strategy, and impact). The average score was 25.1 (SD 6.4).
HERA: A Health Platform for Refugees [
The projects were more successful, globally, in terms of approach, with a mean score of 9.37 (SD 1.79) out of 15 points. Out of 7 projects that were assessed, 4 (57%;
The implementation strategy score of projects was low, overall, given the early stage of the projects at the time of review. As such, only projects that existed prior to the program—HERA [
For winners in each category, JOGL awarded them physical space for showcasing their project during the 2020 ChangeNOW forum at the Grand Palais in Paris as well as tickets for the Maddy Keynote, a major innovation event in Paris. Two partners—Excelya and the Wild Code School—also provided awards to the projects of their choice. Additionally, the Qualitative Analysis of Tweets on Vaccination [
Bar plot of review scores per category for all reviewed projects. Bars show average values for all questions related to each category, and error bars represent SDs. Projects are shown by decreasing global score. APRICOT: Antigen Presentation Using Crispr for TB; HERA: Health Recording App.
The Co-Immune program was designed to foster the creation and development of citizen science and open innovation projects addressing the contemporary challenges of vaccination in France and around the globe by reaching four specific objectives: (1) to foster collaborative, open, and transdisciplinary dynamics; (2) to promote the emergence of accessible knowledge and innovative solutions; (3) to support participants in the elaboration and development of their projects; and (4) to disseminate the outputs and results in an open science framework. Below, we discuss to what extent Co-Immune reached these objectives and highlight the challenges and facilitators in implementing such a program.
First, the program succeeded in creating a collaborative and transdisciplinary environment through its three core features: the JOGL platform, the organization of events, and the contest approach. This led to forming partnerships with 13 different organizations and recruiting over 230 participants, who displayed 492 unique skills and were engaged in creating 22 projects. The use of on-site hackathons was beneficial in gathering nonacademic participants from various backgrounds. Our data show that in-person events and local outreach played a significant role in growing the community around Co-Immune. These offline events recruited 45% of the total community. Local enrollment was further strengthened by local partnerships, such as higher education organizations. However, the localization of our on-site events in Paris did not allow for the participation of people living in other parts of France or the rest of the world. Additionally, our online communication restricted the access of the online events to our realm of influence and to people with an internet connection. More inclusive participation geared toward people with diverse socioeconomic statuses and geographic situations is desirable in the future to give them agency over solving the problems that affect them. The development of new communities is usually a slow process in the absence of exogenous shocks, such as the surge in collaborative communities created by the COVID-19 pandemic [
Second, two design elements of the program converged to promote the emergence of knowledge and solutions to address aspects of access to vaccines and vaccination hesitancy: (1) the identification of challenges by experts in the field and (2) the alignment of the program strategy with national and international policies by frequent consultation with public health bodies and mobilization of members of public institutions in the CESI. Yet, greater representation of people affected by poor access to vaccines and people who are hesitant would be desirable to strengthen the alignment between the solutions developed and the most pressing needs at the local level.
Recently, online events have been used widely during the COVID-19 pandemic [
Third, the use of the JOGL platform, the mentorship during events, the assessment and feedback from experts, and the connection with a wide range of partners supported participants in the elaboration of their project in an efficient way. The use of the JOGL platform enabled projects to gain visibility, list their needs to create interfaces for collaboration, and share open data sets, code, and tools. Indeed, online platforms can offer projects that started at hackathons a pathway to pursue their development, potentially alleviating one of the main drawbacks of such short temporal interventions [
Finally, the open science environment of this program was not only an asset for disseminating the outputs and results of the projects developed, but it also enabled them to replicate initiatives and, thereby, accelerate the resolution of the global health challenges they address. An example of this was given by the team from the project HERA: A Health Platform for Refugees [
Co-Immune showcases that short, focused programs can be efficient at mobilizing diverse communities in a rapid manner and harvesting ideas from various domains to address global health challenges. Yet, more case studies and evaluation work on similar programs are necessary to assess the full relevance of their design and the impact of the projects that are developed within them.
Co-Immune highlights how open innovation approaches and online platforms can help to gather and coordinate noninstitutional communities in a rapid, distributed, and global way toward solving SDG-related issues. The Co-Immune program gathered participants and partners from various backgrounds in a newly formed community to facilitate the creation of new projects as well as the continuation of existing projects to address the issues of vaccination hesitancy and access. In an open framework, the projects made their data, code, and solutions publicly available.
Through hackathons and other contest approaches, such initiatives can lead to the production and transfer of knowledge, creating novel solutions in the public health sector. The example of Co-Immune contributes to paving the way for organizations and individuals to collaboratively tackle future global challenges.
Co-Immune partners and supplementary method for comparing Just One Giant Lab (JOGL) with other platforms.
Co-Immune project assessment grid.
Antigen Presentation Using Crispr for TB
Committee for Ethics, Science and Impact
Center for Research and Interdisciplinarity
Health Recording App
Just One Giant Lab
Sustainable Development Goal
World Health Organization
First, we would like to thank all the Co-Immune participants that made the program possible by bringing their creativity, skills, and insights to address contemporary public health challenges. We thank Sanofi for funding this program, especially Diane Brément and Nansa Burlet for their assistance. We thank the Just One Giant Lab (JOGL) team for their work on coordinating the Co-Immune program, with special efforts from Lola Casamitjana and Marine Vouard. We thank the Center for Research and Interdisciplinarity (CRI), Paris; Epitech Paris; Sup Biotech; and the Wild Code School for their support in organizing events with their students; Kap Code, Excelya, Girls in Tech, CorrelAid, and Data for Good for their guidance and technical assistance to participants and projects; and S3Odéon, TUBÀ, ChangeNOW, and the Maddy Keynote for the visibility they provided to this program. We thank the interviewees at the 7th Fondation Merieux Vaccine Acceptance conference for highlighting the key issues to address and potential solutions on which participants could build. We thank the mentors for the support they provided to projects and participants throughout the duration of the Co-Immune program. We thank Enric Senabre Hidalgo for insightful comments during the final stages of writing this manuscript. Finally, we thank the members of the Committee for Ethics, Science and Impact (CESI)—Gilles Babinet, Jérôme Béranger, Anshu Bhardwaj, Liem Binh Luong Nguyen, Mélanie Heard, Ariel Lindner, Juliette Puret, and Olivier Rozaire—for their valuable input that allowed the creation and implementation of a framework for ethics, science, and impact for the Co-Immune program and the independent assessment of its projects.
TL and IV co-designed the theme and the scope of the program at the early stage of the initiative. CM and TL conceived the program. CM led the coordination team of the program. CM, BGT, TL, CLBG, and MS participated in the program implementation. BGT, RJ, and MS analyzed data. CM, BGT, GF, CLBG, and MS wrote the paper.
GF was paid by Just One Giant Lab (JOGL) to support the elaboration of the manuscript; provided consulting services to Vaccines Europe, a trade association based in Belgium; and is a volunteer board member of the Coalition for Life-Course Immunisation, a UK-based charity. CM worked as the Co-Immune program coordinator for JOGL. BGT was an unpaid advisor to JOGL. JOGL received funding from Sanofi to develop and implement the program, which included publication fees. Sanofi respected the strict independence of JOGL, which administers its platform and the Co-Immune page in complete autonomy. Similarly, the Committee for Ethics, Science and Impact (CESI) was independent of Sanofi and decided alone on the strategic and scientific orientations of the program and the best projects to be rewarded.