Addressing antimicrobial resistance through community engagement: a framework for developing contextually relevant...

Area of Science:

• Public Health
• Health Behavior
• One Health

Background:

• Community engagement (CE) interventions aim to promote behavior change for specific challenges.
• Co-producing behavior change suggestions with communities is essential for CE effectiveness.
• Tensions arise when community lived experience conflicts with academic evidence, particularly in antimicrobial resistance (AMR).

Purpose of the Study:

• To describe a framework for equitable development of contextually appropriate, evidenced-based behavioral objectives for CE interventions.
• To explore diverse knowledge sources on AMR, including stakeholder perspectives.

Main Methods:

• Developed a framework for selecting key AMR content based on academic evidence, contextual appropriateness, and CE approach.
• Utilized a case study to demonstrate the framework's application across various contexts and CE approaches.

Main Results:

• The framework facilitates the selection of relevant AMR content, integrating academic evidence with community context.
• A case study showed the framework's adaptability for diverse settings, CE methods, and One Health issues beyond AMR.

Conclusions:

• Academic evidence is vital for informing CE intervention content.
• Involving community members in formative work is crucial to value their contextual knowledge.
• The choice of CE approach influences the scope of content delivery due to methodological constraints.