Clare Chandler attended the British Academy’s Just Transitions for AMR

In January, our co-director, Clare Chandler, joined colleagues from a range of disciplines at the British Academy for a social sciences stocktake of AMR interventions over the past decade, since the 2015 Global Action Plan launch. The symposium was run through the British Academy’s Just Transitions for AMR convening group and focused on (un)intended consequences of a variety of AMR interventions, from prevention, access and stewardship to innovation and market shaping to governance.  

Prof Chandler gave a keynote address, highlighting the need for societal approaches to understanding and addressing AMR. She signposted the growing evidence base from social and humanities scholarship on the topic of AMR including examples from a range of studies that have developed and evaluated interventions to improve prevention of AMR and use of antimicrobial medicines. These included social and behavioural interventions targeting prescribing and infection control, around which there is a growing evidence base. The keynote noted that the evidence base to address lived experiences with AMR is far weaker, as is the evidence of interventions to address the uneven population distribution of AMR, which may require evaluation of more ‘upstream’ social protection approaches. Equally poorly documented are the impacts of AMR interventions themselves, which may rely on those who are already at unequal disadvantage to shoulder the burden of intervention. Prof Chandler ended by considering the kinds of evidence that are needed to inform action on AMR, going beyond quantitative outcomes, as well as considering the interplay between interventions and evidence making.  

The talks of this symposium were particularly relevant to the newly launched IMPACT AMR Network because of the considerations of the types of impacts AMR interventions can have, and the outstanding need to be able to identify which will be most impactful – with least negative consequences, and ideally with co-benefits – in given contexts.