Background: The rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine represented more than logistical challenges. Lebanon, despite benefitting from the COVAX initiative that made vaccines more accessible to everyone residing in the country, faced considerable challenges encouraging the Syrian refugee population to register for a vaccine. The reasons behind refugees’ reluctance to get vaccinated were mainly behavioral in nature: fear of side effects, doubts about the vaccine’s effectiveness, and even the belief that the vaccine was unnecessary. Methods: An RCT was conducted in order to test the impact of dissonance induction on the level of willingness of Syrian refugee survey respondents who had not been vaccinated (n=1,569). The survey also collected data on refugees’ knowledge, attitudes, and practices regarding the vaccine. Results: Results revealed that dissonance induction significantly reduced vaccine hesitancy, with more pronounced effects detected among women, middle aged adults. Conclusion: These findings have important implications on rethinking the behavioral aspect of the delivery of public health services to the refugee population in Lebanon and vulnerable populations elsewhere.

This paper investigates the effect of gamification tools on the learning outcomes of an educational program that uses football to convey keywords representing the life skills students are expected to develop throughout the program. During each session, three keywords were reinforced. To enhance the retrieval abilities of students (n=732) from Grades 3 to 6, a behavioural intervention was rolled out, consisting of six sets of puzzles that each formed a keyword. Students in the treatment group were asked to assemble the puzzles corresponding to the three keywords of the session, while control students followed the standard planned reflection. Students were then quizzed on their ability to recognize the keywords from among a list of words. The intervention resulted in a 14.2% increase in the number of correct words identified, significant at the 5% level, with the keyword ‘communication’ showing a retention rate 25.3 percentage points higher in the treatment group compared to control. Such findings support the implementation of gamification tools in educational settings, as they can be helpful in developing students’ working memory, which is instrumental in bridging abstract concepts and practical, applicable life skills.