Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a major threat to global health, food security and economic welfare. Currently, at least 700,000 people die each year due to drug resistant bacteria, and unless action is taken this number is projected to rise to 10 million deaths per year. The global rise of AMR is a result of complex and multifarious factors. Poor antimicrobial stewardship combined with constraints on the development of new antimicrobials and alternative therapies are significant drivers in healthcare environments.
AMR is not confined to hospitals, or even to human communities. The widespread use of antimicrobials in agriculture and their presence in wastewater and pharmaceutical effluent contribute to the spread of clinically relevant pathogens and drug resistance genes among animals and the wider environment. Tackling this problem on a global scale requires more informed policy, guided by scientific and technical innovations combined with a better understanding of relevant social and ethnographic drivers.
The Bath Beacon for Managing Antimicrobial Resistance in a Changing World establishes the University of Bath as an expert, interdisciplinary research community primed to tackle the major drivers of AMR. Through our multidisciplinary, diverse and intersecting research expertise in AMR will we explore a range of challenges and knowledge gaps critical in the fight against AMR. This will include fundamental evolutionary processes, epidemiological modelling, drug discovery and delivery, and social science.
Research themes
We have identified five major research themes that will form the foundation of our Beacon and where members have an established track record:
- Surveillance (clinical and environmental) and Genomics
- Modelling AMR Transmission
- Drug Discovery and Molecular Microbiology
- Drug Delivery and Diagnosis
- Health Behaviour Change and Social Policy and Development
Our extensive global collaborative networks through this Beacon will also provide us with an opportunity to explore training and capacity building in low-and middle-income countries (LMICs). We will align our activities closely with the priorities of the UK’s AMR National Action Plan, which also underpin the strategic aims of UKRI. These priorities include:
- improving infection prevention and control
- optimizing antimicrobial use
- enhancing surveillance and research into new antimicrobial drugs and alternative treatments
- strengthening international collaboration and sharing best practice
- raising awareness and Education (among the public and professionals)
