On Monday 18th November, as World AMR Awareness Week began, the Fleming Initiative team were out in force at Paddington Station, London, UK with our inaugural partner GSK and a playful yet purposeful pop-up public engagement installation.
We were piloting creative ways to engage and consult the public on antimicrobial resistance (AMR). We used an analogue, interactive quiz format to test public understanding, attitudes and appetite for action on AMR, to inform those tackling this global health crisis through research or policy. What we learned will also help shape our future public engagement activity.
Dr Kate Grailey and I pooled our engagement and behavioural science expertise to create the quiz content, drawing on additional expert input from Fleming Initiative Policy Network members from the Department for Health & Social Care, Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs, and UK Health Security Agency.
Participants used colourful stickers to answer true/false and multiple choice questions, helping us understand the degree to which AMR and the growing threat it poses is even on their radar. They were also invited to become an antibiotic guardian and make one simple pledge about how they’ll make better use of antibiotics and keep these vital medicines working, at www.antibioticguardian.com
Across the course of the day, we gathered over 700 data points and enjoyed lively, informative, even moving conversations with passing members of the public, from commuters and shoppers to local residents and hospital staff.
Our pop-up installation was located just yards from the historic lab at St Mary’s Hospital where Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin in 1928 and to the site where the future Fleming Centre – co-locating research, public engagement and policy work – will be created.
The installation is mobile and the quiz content can be updated to align with and inform specific AMR research and policy questions, so look out for future iterations of our playful but purposeful pop-up.
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