Table 1.

Potential roles of community pharmacists in reducing COVID‐19 vaccine hesitancy and increasing vaccine access and uptake

Role	Role description
Serving as source of information and vaccine administration	This may include staying up to date with the evolving evidence on COVID‐19, its vaccines, and therapeutics so that they can serve as a reliable information source to other fellow health professionals, patients, and the public. To this end, identifying and making the best use of available credible information sources is vital. Pharmacists should tailor their communication to specific clients in an easily digestible form to help their customers to make rational vaccination‐related benefits to risk analysis and decision making. Pharmacy professionals should aim to use both traditional and social media, whenever possible, to ensure effective reach to the public. Community pharmacies have been increasingly contributing to various vaccination programs and now to the COVID‐19 vaccination in multiple countries including the USA, the UK and Australia. 7 , 34 This expands the scope of care provided by pharmacists and leads to an expanded public health role for pharmacists in a post‐pandemic world.
Debunking myths	Pharmacy professionals should be prepared to proactively raise and discuss the issue of vaccination with their clients whenever the opportunity arises. Such opportunities may include when counselling patients on their medications, responding to queries, selling masks, hand sanitisers, or over‐the‐counter medications. Pharmacists are trained and experienced in actively listening to their clients to identify emerging falsified COVID‐19 and vaccine‐related information and provide evidence‐based information or direct their customers to trusted information sources such as professional associations' websites.
Health promotion	Pharmacists can serve as role models by receiving the vaccines themselves and reiterating the importance of taking one to other health professionals and their clients. Pharmacies can also promote vaccination through the preparation of relevant in‐store audio‐visuals and posters to disseminate evidence‐based information on COVID‐19 and the relevance of vaccination. Such approaches have been observed to be effective in bringing desired health behaviour changes. 35 The wide accessibility of pharmacies particularly provides them with the unique opportunity to use their point of care to promote vaccination, especially in remote and rural areas where vaccination and related information would be limited. Pharmacists can also promote COVID‐19 vaccination through targeted campaigns on weekends, institutionalized campaigns, television advertisements, and radio jingles.
Ensuring safety	This may include efforts such as arranging vaccination appointments in a way that ensures shortest possible stay of a minimal number of clients at vaccination areas and encouraging mask wearing and providing hand sanitisers.
Education	Pharmacists can use their encounter with vaccine recipients as a unique opportunity to educate the public on how to spot and what to do when vaccine side effects warranting special attention, treatment, and referral, happen.
Research	Where possible, pharmacists should engage in research to contribute to the search for evidence informing policy and practice. For instance, researchers from academic and research institutions may collaborate with community pharmacists to assess the public's knowledge, attitude, and experience related to COVID‐19 as well as its vaccines.