Fleming Initiative continues AMR education convening series

On April 3rd, the Fleming Initiative hosted the second set of meetings convening global experts and key stakeholders to discuss AMR education in school-aged children.

We were delighted to have around 60 participants who contributed to the discussion across two meetings, representing a fantastic range of organisations and expertise from across the world.

Chaired by Dr Kate Grailey, the Fleming Initiative were delighted to welcome Dr Altaf Ahmed (‘Germ Journey’), Dr Ayuska Parajuli (‘WASH Away AMR’), and Dr Sweety Suman Jha (‘Bridging Traditions’) to present their work on delivering AMR education initiatives for school children in Pakistan, Nepal, and India.

The meetings also heard insights from Professor Geoff Masters (World-Class Learning Systems) on embedding AMR into curricula, particularly thinking about how we can monitor pupil’s progress and evaluate the impact our educational initiatives have.

Over the course of this convening series, the Fleming Initiative will work together with experts and stakeholders as a group to achieve consensus on:

• What those invested in mitigating AMR should expect children and adolescents to know about AMR

• What is reasonable for children and adolescents to do in their role as antimicrobial stewards and AMR advocates / activists

• How can we measure the success / impact of educational initiatives in primary and secondary education

The open discussions yesterday focused on reviewing our initial draft of a consensus document, and we are grateful to everyone who participated for their engagement.

We received deeply insightful comments and suggestions as wide-ranging as:

• Addressing gender disparity in access to educational initiatives and risk of AMR

• Incorporating teaching on the beneficial role of bacteria and other microbes, to highlight the importance of minimising antimicrobial misuse

• Working to ensure the recommendations of our consensus document are able to be tailored to local contexts and cultures

• Creating a set of principles for the document as a guide for ongoing work

These comments and suggestions were a clear demonstration of the value in convening diverse global expertise, which the Fleming Initiative is committed to.

We hope that by achieving global consensus on best practices and approaches for integrating antimicrobial resistance into education will provide a pathway to scale for educational initiatives worldwide.

Please contact Dr Kate Grailey (k.grailey18@imperial.ac.uk) if you would have experience of school education and would like to take part in the final convening meeting of this series in June, or if you know of an educational project relating to antimicrobial resistance that can be considered for inclusion in our ongoing global living review.