Maximizing voluntary compliance in antimicrobial stewardship programs: a critical factor for effective intervention

Project Description

Efforts to encourage the prudent use of antimicrobials have shifted focus towards designing and implementing stewardship programs. Because agricultural uses of antimicrobials have varied broadly in scope and scale, application of stewardship programs from human medical settings is problematic. A new stewardship model for animal agriculture is needed. Yet, considerable evidence exists that regulatory approaches alone are poorly suited to a changing microbiological threat; therefore, responsive and forward-looking efforts exploring effective voluntary actions that go beyond product label requirements are urgently needed. A4171: Effective Mitigation Strategies for Antimicrobial Resistance. Our activities are fully integrated, while our logic model, management plan and external evaluation are grounded in systems thinking. Our team has the extensive experience, recognized expertise and a documented history of highly successful multidisciplinary collaborations that are essential to achieving our objectives and delivering highly adoptable and widely diffused voluntary interventions that will mitigate antimicrobial resistance. Our objectives pertaining to beef and dairy cattle production systems are to: 1. Recruit key stakeholders to qualitatively explore the essential components and systems framework to maximize voluntary compliance with highly effective antimicrobial stewardship programs, 2. Conduct empirical field studies to provide key microbiological, production, economic, and social science decision support data, 3. Perform qualitative and quantitative modeling needed to design, test, and improve essential decision support tools, and 4. Engage key stakeholders to further develop, refine and communicate highly effective decision support tools to enhance their voluntary adoption and diffusion and to maximize antimicrobial stewardship.