Engagement with Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR)

Capturing the evidence on access to essential antibiotics in refugee and migrant populations
This report provides policy considerations for equitable access and appropriate use of antibiotics among refugee and migrant populations in five areas: global governance, research and surveillance, and barriers to seeking formal care, utilizing formal care and receiving adequate and quality care.

Framework and Toolkit for Infection Prevention and Control in Outbreak Preparedness, Readiness and Response at the Health Care Facility Level
This document provides guidance and tools for decision-makers responsible for the establishment and monitoring of healthcare facility-level IPC programmes, including IPC focal points, epidemiologists, public health experts, or key stakeholders.

Youth engagement
A learning framework about antimicrobial resistance for children and young people. A downloadable resource for educators, health & research professionals to help develop young peoples’ understanding of AMR and positive actions they can take to mitigate it.

Working in partnership with young people in Kenya, Vietnam, Thailand, and Nepal, a team from the Oxford Tropical Network has developed a learning resource to support educators, health professionals and researchers as they work with children and youth to better understand AMR.

Download the framework here!

Solutions to the emerging challenge of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) will require ideas and actions from a wide range of people including children and young people.  In order for them to meaningfully engage with the challenge and contribute to solutions, they need a clear understanding of AMR, its causes, effects and current strategies for mitigation.  This learning framework is a resource for teachers, educators, research scientists, and informal learning providers to enable them to develop young peoples’ understanding of:

• The science behind AMR
• The individual, community and global health risks AMR presents
• The positive actions they can take to mitigate against AMR

The framework identifies key learning outcomes appropriate to different age groups that are applicable across a diverse range of settings and learning environments. It can be used as a tool for structuring curricula and learning activities.

Mesh Community Engagement Network
Mesh is an online network for people working in community engagement with global health research. It is a collaborative, open-access knowledge hub where community engagement practitioners, researchers, health workers and others can network, share resources, and discuss good practices.

Access resources and project reports on AMR, including:

• A puppet show to engage the community addressing antimicrobial resistance and research with children in Thailand
• Public Engagement with Microbial Resistance through Drama in Karnataka, India
• Superheroes Against Superbugs: a public engagement project that aims to raise public awareness and improve public understanding of antibiotic resistant-infections in India, and to build a society of smart antibiotic users
• An animation produced by the Vietnamese Platform for Antimicrobial Reductions in Chicken production (ViParc) to encourage local farmers to reduce use of antimicrobials in chicken rearing, that was part of a wider community dialogue project to understand why farmers use antibiotics for livestock.

The Community Engagement for Antimicrobial Resistance project (CE4AMR)
CE4AMR is a network for researchers and practitioners using community engagement approaches to tackle AMR in low- and middle-income countries. CE4AMR brings together artists, health professionals, engineers, social and environmental scientists, and arts and humanities researchers to create a cross-disciplinary platform through which to share ideas, tackle research gaps and develop new skill sets to address AMR at community level.  Rather than regarding community engagement approaches as “add-ons” to research, CE4AMR views them as integral to meeting global recommendations on tackling AMR as stipulated by the World Health Organisation and country-specific AMR action plans.
The network shares project reports and reflections, guides for engagement and community-produced resources on AMR:

• Guide: The values and principles underpinning community engagement approaches to tackling antimicrobial resistance
  
• Community-produced films: As part of the CARAN project, two communities in the Kathmandu Valley, Nepal, were trained to make short films describing their relationships with AMR. 

Wellcome - Responsive Dialogues on Drug Resistant Infections
This pamphlet summarises the Responsive Dialogue framework developed by Wellcome. It illustrates how Responsive Dialogues can be used to generate solutions that are grounded in local realities and embrace ideas and views from the public.
Responsive Dialogues are designed to:

• Engage the public, communities, and stakeholders in deliberating the complex issues, leading to a mutual understanding of feelings, attitudes, and behaviours towards the challenge of AMR, its causes, and consequences.
• Empower the public to come together to develop solutions and policy asks to address the challenges of AMR in a local context.
• Facilitate inclusive policymaking that takes into account public perceptions and local realities.

Wellcome - Reframing Resistance Report: How to communicate about antimicrobial resistance effectively
Global action to tackle drug-resistant infections is not happening at the scale and urgency needed. Action among political leaders can be strengthened with public support. But public understanding of antimicrobial resistance and its impact is currently limited. We can change this by communicating more powerfully.

• The Reframing Resistance Report outlines five evidence-based principles for communicators to keep in mind when talking to the public about drug-resistant infections. When used together, they are more likely to create communication that informs, motivates, and persuades.
• From this, Wellcome have put together a Reframing Resistance Toolkit to support experts and practitioners working on drug-resistant infections to communicate effectively with the public and communities (also in Vietnamese, Thai, Japanese and German). 
• Video: Drug-resistance infections: the power of language.
• Webinar: How to talk about antimicrobial resistance effectively (read the transcript).

Wellcome - Antibiotics are the basis of modern medicine, these projects aim to keep it that way:
A summary of grassroots community engagement projects to change people’s attitudes and behaviour so that antibiotics will remain effective for as long as possible. These initiatives meet local needs and circumstances, but they could be copied, adapted, and replicated for use in other countries. 

• Tanzania - the Accredited Drug Dispensing Outlets (ADDOs) programme: changing the way shop owners dispense antibiotics. The programme has trained shop owners about the dangers of customers misusing antibiotics. Watch the video and access more information.
• India - Superheroes Against Superbugs (SaS): partnering with young children to develop grassroots comics. Launched in 2018, aims to raise awareness about antibiotic resistance, and promote community dialogue and action by engaging young children in India through hands-on activities and group activities with scientists and doctors. Find out more and access community engagement resources. 
• South Africa - empowering hospital pharmacists to advise on antibiotics. Watch the video.

Malaria Consortium - One Health and community engagement: Two complementary approaches for tackling antimicrobial resistance
The fight against AMR is a prime example of the need to adopt a ‘One Health’ approach – a coordinated, collaborative, multidisciplinary and cross-sectoral approach to improving health and wellbeing.

• This report highlights the value and importance of combining One Health and community engagement to tackle antimicrobial resistance (AMR). It summarises the threat that AMR poses globally and explains why it requires a One Health approach, what this means for the global health community and how community engagement via targeted social and behaviour change interventions could help minimise its spread.
• This video introduces the Community Dialogue Approach to facilitate effective community engagement with health issues in low- and middle-income countries.
• This study built on the assumption that successfully changing people’s behaviour requires innovative and participatory community engagement and aimed to develop, adapt and pilot-test the community dialogue approach for preventing and controlling antibiotic resistance in Bangladesh.
• Access more resources on One Health here.

The Antimicrobial Resistance Fighter Coalition:

The Antimicrobial Resistance Fighter Coalition has developed toolkits and infographics which can be used for community or public engagement to empower and enable stakeholders to combat AMR by raising awareness within both professional and personal communities. The kits have currently been developed for three audiences: Healthcare and Policy Organizations, Global Health Policy Leaders, and Patients and Patient Advocacy Groups. Read more here!!! 

CIDRAP launches a communication toolkit for antimicrobial resistance:

The CIDRAP AMR Communication Toolkit, includes posters, infographics and a video, which provides a background of AMR and how to prevent it. It is a useful toolkit for doctors and patients to raise AMR awareness.