World Antimicrobial Resistance Awareness Week

The World Antimicrobial Resistance Awareness Week (WAAW) aims to increase awareness of global antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and to encourage best practices for using antimicrobials responsibly among the general public, health workers and policy makers, to avoid the further emergence and spread of drug-resistant infections. The focus for WAAW and EAAD in England is normally on health and social care workers, as well as patients who have been prescribed antibiotics. Whilst this is still an important focus, especially in light of a difficult flu season, the WAAW campaign remains accessible for all members of the community to take part in and learn from, including veterinary, food, and environmental organisations and their users.

World AMR Awareness Week takes place from 18 to 24 November each year. WAAW is led globally by the World Health Organization (WHO). 

To continue reading and for more information on the WAAW, please visit www.gov.uk.

Crossing the streams: Integrating skills and knowledge between Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) and Public Patient Involvement (PPI)

This workshop was held on 5 December 2022 at The Old Fire Station, Oxford. The workshop was a joint initiative between the Nuffield Department of Health, and the MRC-funded project Adolescent Mental Health and the Developing Mind. 

 Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) and Public/Patient Involvement (PPI) are tools that can help researchers think about the way they carry out their research, as well as about how they involve others within the research process. While both RRI and PPI are helpful ways of supporting researchers in their work in this way, often they are not found alongside each other within research environments, despite having many similar concerns. 

 The workshop aimed to start unpacking RRI and PPI, to examine areas of commonality and difference, and investigate the different lenses they bring to participant-inclusive research. The workshop focused on the topic of data ethics, consent and participant databases as a case study to understand how RRI and PPI can be applied in a specific research scenario. Two ‘masterclasses’ familiarised workshop attendees with both areas, and a shared activity delved into how both RRI and PPI could be used in different ways for the case-study. The outcomes of this workshop will be taken forward within the MRC project to inform future approaches to responsibly managing and utilising large databases of participant data for clinical research as well as ways of sharing and communicating researchers’ responsible actions to engaged research participants.