The Business Roundtable, the CDC Foundation and other nonprofits launched the Health Action Alliance on Thursday, a joint initiative to help bolster vaccination efforts and encourage people to get inoculated. 

The alliance, which also includes the Ad Council, de Beaumont Foundation and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, will provide resources to the business community to help companies deliver information to employees on COVID-19 vaccines. 

The group will provide free tools, resources, training and events for companies to deliver fact-based health communications to employees and encourage consumers to make informed decisions about the vaccine. 

“Now is the time to step in and give our employees as much information as possible to promote vaccination. It would have been a frustration three months ago because we might end up providing information, promoting vaccination, and there just wouldn’t have been a vaccine available,” Joshua Bolten, president and CEO of Business Roundtable, said on a press call with reporters. 

Bolten also noted that his member companies “across the board” are “all in on vaccination.”

The alliance will provide the business community with tools to guide the development of COVID-19 vaccination policies, research-backed messaging and virtual events and training opportunities with health experts, scientists and communication professionals, among other resources.

“Employers are trusted voices and can play an essential role,” Judy Monroe, president and CEO of the CDC Foundation, said at the press conference. “Although the alliance is new, its work will extend the tradition of business and public health working together.”

Corporations could mandate that employees take the vaccine, but the alliance stressed that their goal is to educate employees to make informed decisions.

“Companies want as many of their employees to get vaccinated as possible but you’re right, it’s a sensitive issue. If we go about it with finger-wagging … it could have a counterproductive affect,” he said. “Not to force people to get vaccinated but make them want to get vaccinated because that’s what’s going to produce the highest number in the end.”

The effort comes as communities across the United States have expressed hesitancy about taking a new vaccine that was developed in record time.

Top public health experts, including Anthony Fauci, have encouraged people to take the vaccine, and have gotten vaccinated on camera with the goal of fostering trust in the American people about the product.