Public Engagement Provision (360G-Wellcome-106918_Z_15_A)

Public health organizations such as the NHS, the CDC and the WHO have established public health campaigns aimed at informing the public regarding the dangers of antibiotic resistant bacteria. What is unique about this research program is that we will investigate how antibiotic use alters the genetic composition of bacterial populations within an individual patient, and our results will provide some clues as to how this might affect the outcome of future infections. This projects vision for public engagement is two-fold. First, we will seek to communicate the insights into the personal consequences of antibiotic use arising from our research to the general public. This is a novel and important goal, because existing public health campaigns focus on the threat that resistance poses to society, and not to individuals. Second, we will try and provide team members with a platform to express their own individual view of the problem of antibiotic resistance. In the first two years of the project, we will focus on grass-roots public engagement by presenting informational clinics in local science museums (Oxford Natural History Museum, Oxford Museum for the History of Science). In these clinics, team members and student volunteers will present information to the public on antibiotic use and the rise of resistance, placing a strong emphasis on our work. To complement these workshops, we will develop an online survey tool that will form part of a project website, as described below. The survey tool will allow us to gauge the level of public understanding of resistance and measure the efficacy of our public engagement activities. In the third year of the project, we will host a one-day conference aimed at establishing relationships with key partners to help disseminate the findings of our work to the general public more broadly. We will invite learned societies (SGM, BSAC, The Royal Society), the NHS, and public advocacy groups (Antibiotic Action, Antibiotic Awareness) to this meeting. We will then host a one-day follow-up meeting in the final year of the project to update our partners on our progress. We will monitor the success of this approach via feedback questionnaires that will be distributed to representatives of partner organizations. Throughout the course of the project, we will communicate with the public using the internet. First, we will develop a professional-quality website dedicated to the project that will provide the public with a portal for following our work and providing feedback on our public engagement activities. We will also establish a social media presence for the project and provide followers with updates on our work through popular social media outlets like Twitter and Facebook. We will also develop and post performance art to communicate our results in a more artistically creative manner (ie Danceyourphd style videos). The efficacy of this approach will be monitored by using internet metrics.