1.2 Raising awareness of AMR
Efforts to raise awareness can employ a general strategy to target the public or a focused one to target key stakeholder groups directly engaged in AMR and AMS activities. (IACG, 2018). Public health communication campaigns can have a positive impact in terms of curbing AMU by:
- raising awareness of the growing problem of drug resistance
- reducing patient expectations of providers’ prescribing antimicrobials
- explaining why antimicrobials will not work to address common viral conditions like colds or flu.
One example is the
Examples of campaign materials from WAAW 2020 are available from the WHO’s website [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] (WHO, 2020).
Activity 3: Raising awareness of AMR
Watch the following video produced for WAAW 2020, in which civil society organisations in Africa demonstrate how they have been raising awareness of AMR (ReActTube, 2020).
As you watch the video, list the ways in which stakeholders are being brought together and how communication of data is encouraged .
Answer
Stakeholders are being brought together and communication of data is encouraged by workshops, a webinar series, an AMR desk and campaigning on social networks.
Identifying areas where public or professional knowledge and awareness is lacking and targeting these areas with educational messaging is referred to as a
If you intend to raise stakeholder awareness, sometimes a knowledge deficit model alone is not enough to change behaviours. Research has shown that communications that compare stakeholders with their peers, as opposed to an education-only message, were consistently found to be more effective in reducing prescription rates in the six months after receiving the letter (Australian Government, 2018). The example in Case Study 2 demonstrates how AMU and AMC data can be communicated effectively at a local level to reduce antimicrobial prescribing.
Case Study 2: Nudge versus superbug (Australian Government, 2018)
Behavioural insights were applied to the design of four different letters sent to high-prescribing GPs (specifically, those in the top 30% of prescribers). The letters aimed to prompt GPs to reflect on whether they could reduce prescribing when appropriate and safe.
GPs received one of four different letters: an education letter, or one of three letters with peer comparison feedback.
The education letter simply contained standard information about AMR, and also included two posters from the National Prescribing Service.
The three other letters all began with peer comparison in the first line of the letter, for example:
Your prescribing rate is higher than 91% of doctors in the Canberra region.
These letters provided GPs with information on how their prescribing compared to their peers, to help influence future prescribing. Simple peer comparison feedback like this can be powerful, because we often look to the behaviour of others to guide our own choices. As in this example, letters to individual GPs informed them on AMR, and their prescribing practices compared to GPs in their region, a relevant reference group.
The second peer‑comparison letter also included an eye-catching graph, illustrating the difference between that GP’s prescribing rate and the average for their region.
The third peer‑comparison letter included additional material on wait-and-see prescribing. For example, the idea was that doctors could place delayed prescribing stickers on a script to encourage patients to monitor their symptoms before deciding whether to fill the script.
The first letter reduced prescribing rates by 3.3% over six months, whereas the three peer comparison letters drove prescribing rates down by 9–12% over the same six-month period.
In addition to the examples of awareness campaigns given above, the ReAct toolbox provides inspiration and guidance on what can be done to address AMR (ReAct, n.d.). This online,
1.1 Targeting priorities
