Poster can be found in location 54.

The recent COVID-19 pandemic reminded us that pregnant persons and their offspring are at increased risk of infectious diseases-related morbidity and mortality. The recent pandemic also reminded us that vaccinations rather than vaccines save lives. The scientific prowess behind designing, testing and manufacturing vaccines is defeated if persons do not get vaccinated. “Vaccination, after water sanitation, proved the most effective intervention to reduce the morbidity and mortality associated with infectious diseases, and has been shown to be more effective than antibiotics” (Stanley Plotkin 2008). Trust is at the core of vaccine confidence and acceptance: person-centred care builds and maintains trust between persons, communities, providers and health systems.  Seeking to support pregnant persons and their providers making health decisions during the COVID-19 pandemic in the face of evolving knowledge, our reproductive infectious disease research team at the University of Calgary, Canada partnered with the Alberta SPOR SUPPORT Unit, Patient Engagement Team to embed trained patient research partners with lived-experience on our research team and to recruit a patient council to inform research priorities and processes. The trained patient research partners and patient council have been instrumental to understand vaccine communication and vaccine decision making in pregnancy and to co-design interventions to improve vaccine communication during pregnancy. The patient research partners and our patient council have highlighted and addressed linguistic and cultural nuances in data collection, analysis and dissemination. Peer-to-peer data collection has made it possible to mitigate power differentials, collect richer data and foster researcher-participant trust. We will share our experience as a research team where members are patients with lived-experience and are formally trained in patient-oriented research. Our learnings provide proof-of-concept for person-centred research role to improve pandemic preparedness and response.