Impact

Residential training course impacts

Policy recommendation in the UK’s 5-year AMR action plan 

Personalising AMR; recording AMR on death certificates 
An outcome from our residential training week in August 2018. One group of six PhD students, from our wider training cohort had the idea of raising awareness of AMR to the public by personalising the issue of AMR through stating antimicrobial resistance as a cause of death (due to a resistant infection) on death certificates. A meeting was arranged via the Programme’s Leaders for this group to meet the then CMO England, Professor Dame Sally Davies, at her office in London on 4th September 2018 and present their idea.

The CMO was receptive to the idea and raised it when she gave her oral evidence to the Health and Social Care Select Committee (HSCC) Antimicrobial Resistance inquiry in September 2018. This was also picked up by the Daily Telegraph (04/09/18) in their article which quotes “The Chief Medical Officer for England called for a change in the rules so that infection and resistance to drugs are routinely included as causes of death on death certificates.“ That would really wake people up to the deaths as they happen,” she said.

In section 3.1.3 on ‘Improve data management’ (page 56) of the UK’s AMR five-year action plan (Tackling antimicrobial resistance 2019-2914) it is stated that the UK will “Increase training to ensure death certification correctly records AMR”

Professor Dame Sally Davies with Wendy Thompson (Leeds), Paul Morris (Sheffield), Camilla Strang (RVC), Beth Grimsey (Birmingham) and Rebecca Tonner (Strathclyde).
Image credit: Wendy Thompson 

Networking and collaborating

Sparking research collaborations
Cohort building meetings, annual conferences (particularly the poster sessions) and the residential training courses are sparking research collaborations between students in the national network and their respective supervisors. AMR research collaborations are being undertaken between the Universities of Oxford and Bath, St. Andrews and Glasgow Caledonian, Warwick and Oxford and Edinburgh and Glasgow Caledonian.                                                 

Public engagement

Raising awareness and advancing the understanding of issues surrounding antimicrobial resistance
Our students regularly take part in public engagement activities at their respective institutions including research visits and events such as ‘Science on the Hill’ (Warwick), ‘Imperial Lates’ (Imperial College), Discovery Zone (Leeds), the Cambridge Science Festival and the Festival of Nature (Bristol).  Many activities take place during the annual WHO’s Antibiotic Awareness week. The students also participate in fund raising activities for the Medical Research Foundation and other charities concerned with tackling AMR including those co-funding our students’ research (e.g. alumni associations). 

Image credits: Imperial College