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antimicrobial resistance It is estimated that there will be 10 million deaths per year by 2050, making it one of the most serious global health challenges of this century. In 2021, an estimated 4.71 million deaths were linked to antibacterial antimicrobial resistance.
Antimicrobial resistance occurs when disease-causing pathogens such as bacteria, viruses, fungi and parasites develop resistance to antimicrobials (medicinal substances used to control them). This turns treatable infections into life-threatening ones.
World Health OrganizationOther organizations, networks, and coalitions conduct extensive campaigns to educate the public about antimicrobial resistance. But after more than a decade of global campaigns, a question remains: has all this awareness really helped tackle antimicrobial resistance?
I am a science communication researcher and member of a global conference on “Just Transitions for Antimicrobial Resistance” funded by the British Academy. We researched the challenges of communicating about antimicrobial resistance and how effective these efforts have been.
We conducted a comprehensive review of 88 studies published between 2015 and 2024. Our review shows that most efforts to communicate about antimicrobial resistance still rely on one-sided awareness campaigns. But simply giving people more information does not change behavior. This becomes even more serious when messages ignore the social, cultural and economic realities that shape everyday decisions.
To make real progress, antimicrobial communication needs to shift toward approaches that are based on people’s lived experiences. It should be participatory, locally relevant and justice-oriented. It should also be informed by social and behavioral sciences. It is also important to better evaluate existing efforts to communicate about this complex health threat.
Barriers to effective campaigning
Over the years, many antimicrobial resistance campaigns have relied on a simple assumption. That is, if people understood what it is, they would use antimicrobial drugs more judiciously. Antimicrobial resistance increases when we take medicines in the wrong doses or for the wrong reasons. For example, when we take antibiotics for a viral infection or share leftover antibiotics. Also, when we stop taking the prescribed medicine too soon.
But behavioral science has repeatedly shown that decisions about science and health are far more influenced by other issues than factual knowledge alone. Emotion, identity, social norms, and lived experiences influence people’s actions.
A message like “use antibiotics responsibly” cannot be successful unless it matches people’s real-life experiences. When people live far from their nearest clinic or when health services are not affordable, they may save leftover medicine for future use or share it with others. Physicians working under pressure in overcrowded facilities may also feel compelled to prescribe antibiotics to meet patients’ expectations after long waits. On dairy, chicken and pig farms, farmers may routinely add antibiotics to animal feed to prevent costly disease outbreaks.
The second major barrier is the language used to communicate antimicrobial resistance. Technical terms such as “antimicrobial resistance”, “management” or “drug-resistant infections” are difficult to pronounce, remember or relate to. It is also often difficult to translate these into local languages. The language used often fails to strike a chord with the public audience. Messages about antimicrobial resistance may seem distant, abstract, and removed from everyday life. They can even be so dangerous that people become isolated. Some experts are also calling for renaming antimicrobial resistance based on co-designing new terminology with local communities.
Another key gap is the lack of messages that offer people clear, practical and achievable steps to take. Many campaigns highlight the magnitude of the crisis but leave people unsure what to do. It promotes anxiety or fatalism. People need concrete and actionable calls to action that make sense in their daily lives. There is also an urgent need to identify and agree on what behavioral changes are desirable, relevant and feasible in different contexts.
moving forward
It is also necessary to tailor communications to a specific audience. A one-size-fits-all message does not work in different social, cultural and linguistic contexts. Parents, farmers, community health workers, pharmacists and physicians all interact with medicines in different ways. They face equally different obstacles. Therefore, audience segmentation is important, and messages should be tailored to local communities.
The evidence is also clear that antimicrobial communication must move from top-down direction to genuine public engagement. Partnership approaches and engagement activities have proven effective in building trust, addressing misinformation and strengthening local ownership of antimicrobial challenges. These include storytelling, online games and community interaction.
About the author
Marina Joubert is a science communication researcher at Stellenbosch University.
This article is republished from Conversation Under Creative Commons license. read the original article,
Communities can and should be co-creators of culturally relevant knowledge and solutions.
Importantly, antimicrobial resistance is deeply linked to inequality. Low- and middle-income countries face a disproportionate burden of resistant infections for several reasons. Overcrowding, limited sanitation, disrupted healthcare systems and unequal access to diagnosis or treatment are some of them. Communication strategies that ignore these systemic inequities risk reinforcing stigma or placing blame on individuals. People must be treated not only as health consumers but as citizens dealing with complex structural challenges.
Public health experts often describe antimicrobial resistance as a “wicked” problem. It is complex, slow-moving, and embedded in social and economic realities that require urgent solutions. It is also full of uncertainty and complexity.
Addressing it requires a communication approach that is as nuanced, sophisticated and intersectional as the challenge.
It is time to rethink what antimicrobial communications should and can achieve. Raising awareness is only a starting point.
Communications must be informed by behaviour, locally based and emotionally compelling. It must be built with communities.
It should use clear language, avoid jargon and provide specific tasks that people can realistically adopt.
It should highlight both the urgency of antimicrobial resistance and the agency that individuals and communities possess. Thus, communication itself has the potential to become an integral part of the solution through collective problem-solving.