Doctor hopes buttons worn by health care workers will encourage vaccination in Toronto shelters

An Ontario emergency room doctor who has worked with unhoused people in the Toronto's shelter system has come up with a new way to encourage COVID-19 vaccination.

That way is called the Button Project. It involves the wearing of cartoon-style buttons by health care workers in shelters to spark conversations about COVID-19 vaccine safety and effectiveness. The bright orange buttons are pinned to clothing, specifically scrubs.

The project is a collaboration between Dr. Shobana Ananth and the Health Design Studio at Ontario College of Art and Design University.

Ananth, who works with Inner City Health Associates and is a clinical lecturer at the University of Toronto's department of family and community medicine, says the project has produced two button designs. Each design features a QR code that, when scanned, links workers to a web page that answers questions about COVID-19 vaccines. The idea was to create simple but attractive messaging, she said.

"I thought, you know what, we should provide health care workers who are vaccinated with a means of talking about their lived experience to peers and patients," Ananth told CBC Radio's Fresh Air on Saturday.

"What I thought of, as simple as it sounds, is a button. The button design is very, very important. I truly saw the intersection of design and medicine and the delivery of care. It's a simple button with a QR code that the health care worker could use to log on to this page of frequently asked questions."

On one button, a QR code appears on top of a heart shape made up of tiny versions of the virus, while on the other, a QR code appears next to an cartoon version of the novel coronavirus, with a bubble coming out of a spike in the virus and a question mark appearing in the bubble.