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Purpose

The paper explores how the development of sustainability competences as key components in antimicrobial resistance (AMR) education can contribute to the implementation of AMR policies in practice.

Design/methodology/approach

Higher education is key to promoting sustainability, including sustainable health. Meanwhile, its role and impact are often complicated by unclear educational objectives and a lack of effective strategies. Interdisciplinary, competence-centred education provides a way to address these gaps. AMR presents a sustainability challenge that impacts health, food security and healthcare systems. Using transformative learning theory and a One Health approach, we conducted two participatory research workshops at Zimbabwean universities with researchers and students. The workshops applied UNESCO's sustainability competencies to explore how participants discussed AMR and how these competencies were expressed in practice.

Findings

Findings indicate that effective AMR education and policy implementation include a multifaceted approach, focusing on interdisciplinary collaborations. Efforts need to go beyond minimising antimicrobial use and engage communities and farmers in addressing everyday economic and social challenges. Integrating interdisciplinary collaborations throughout higher education becomes key in creating sustainable and effective AMR education and policy implementation.

Originality/value

The paper contributes original insights on how sustainability competencies can structure AMR education and provide educational objectives for the often underdeveloped aspect of AMR policy. Competence-focused health education can enable the implementation of policy into practice in ways that are contextually relevant and sensitive to local conditions.

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a global health challenge that encompasses social, economic, and ecological risks, and the relationship between human, animal, and environmental health is emerging as a key factor. Addressing AMR means developing capacities across health sectors, with training of health practitioners through higher education institutions (HEIs) essential for strengthening one's health literacy. This paper explores how Zimbabwean University lecturers and students co-create an understanding of AMR, contributing to the development of AMR literacy. A participatory qualitative study using research workshops was conducted at two Zimbabwean HEIs, engaging 60 interdisciplinary participants in vignette-based discussions of AMR. Using thematic analysis, three key themes were identified: (1) reflective engagement with antimicrobial use impacting environmental, human, and animal health; (2) preventive actions to protect environmental, human, and animal health; and (3) holistic health promotion grounded in social and ecological care. AMR literacy is outlined as interdisciplinary and context-dependent, encompassing biomedical understanding, critical ethical reflections, and pluralistic reasoning, enabling context-relevant approaches and decision-making. This study contributes to global health research by highlighting the potential of participatory and contextually sensitive educational approaches to address AMR. Operationalising AMR literacy could support cross-sectoral collaboration among health practitioners, strengthening global health efforts to address sustainable health challenges.

Often recognised as a determinant of health and key to health communication, education is an underdeveloped concept in global health. This paper develops a conceptual understanding of how educational processes shape engagement with global health challenges, particularly their role in promoting health equity, capability and sustainability. Using antimicrobial resistance (AMR) as an illustrative case, the paper examines how education shapes understandings of health challenges, supports capability development and enables engagement with health governance. Methodologically, the paper adopts an interpretive conceptual synthesis, drawing on an author-led corpus of peer-reviewed papers on AMR education. Guided by frameworks on social determinants of health, health capability and 'wicked' problems, an iterative analysis identifies cross-paper patterns in how education mediates meaning-making, situated capability development and engagement with health governance. A conceptual framework is developed comprising three interrelated contributions: (1) education shapes how global health challenges are understood, valued and problematised, (2) education enables development of capability for situated health action and (3) education constitutes a site for engagement with global health governance. Expected outcomes encompass education as a mediating interface shaping how global health challenges are understood, critically evaluated and addressed, which can inform future research on ways to address global health challenges, including AMR.

Health education programmes are challenged to account for the plurality of education situations and students' experiences. The paper explores how health-related knowledge and values are constructed within curricula and syllabi of Zimbabwean upper-secondary school and within students' discussions about their health-related education. Through discourse analysis, health-related knowledge and values in curriculum and syllabi documents as well as student discussions from group interviews are analysed. Three discourses are articulated, i) nationalistic ii) biomedical, and iii) holistic. Discourses are shown to co-exist and contradict, creating tensions that shape students' agency. Discourses represent different ways of responding to the question 'health for who?'; the nation, the family, and the individual, with implications for the purpose of health-related education and what content is included and excluded. The paper calls for contextually responsive health education, acknowledging discursive plurality and supporting students' agency to critically reflect, contextually act and navigate diverse health priorities and values.

Purpose

A status quo situation has occurred among actors, policymakers, producers, retailers and consumers where no one takes the lead on the antimicrobial resistance (AMR) fight. Common theoretical approaches to behaviour including awareness, understanding and use are insufficient in the AMR context. In this paper, the authors suggest the application of accountability literature to fully understand the status quo situation with AMR.

Design/methodology/approach

AMR in food has become an alarming problem in the past decade and is an increasing threat to global health. The knowledge about AMR often comes from a medical context where the perspective is completely different. Therefore, it is difficult for consumers to apply this to a grocery store context purchasing food.

Findings

This paper uses the concept of accountability and the significant other within the accountability field and discusses how this could help overcome the non-action state of mind of consumers and other actors.

Practical implications

Enhanced accountability could significantly improve One-Health solutions for combating AMR. By fostering a culture of shared responsibility and transparent communication among stakeholders, the silo effect may be mitigated, promoting collaborative efforts. Accountability mechanisms should ensure that roles and responsibilities are clearly defined and communicated across sectors, such as health care, agriculture and policymaking. Educational initiatives can increase AMR awareness, enabling stakeholders to make informed decisions. Integrating perspectives from various domains will facilitate the development of holistic strategies, thus improving the overall effectiveness of efforts to address AMR and ensuring a sustainable approach to public health.

Social implications

Enhanced accountability in AMR management can lead to significant social benefits. By promoting transparency and collective responsibility, communities can foster greater trust and cooperation among various stakeholders, including health-care providers, policymakers and consumers. Increased awareness of AMR can empower individuals to make informed decisions, thereby promoting public health and safety. Socially, this could lead to more sustainable practices in antibiotic use and a reduction in the spread of resistant infections. In addition, fostering a culture of accountability ensures that efforts to combat AMR are more inclusive, equitable and effective, ultimately benefiting society as a whole.

Originality/value

The proposal to create strategies according to a basis of accountability can be applied at all levels of the AMR problem and for all actors. This therefore provides important knowledge about how AMR can be approached in a more long-term way where initiatives to prevent the spread of AMR do not take place in parallel or become difficult to access.

This presentation demonstrates how case vignettes, real-world narratives, enable interdisciplinary collaboration to address antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in Zimbabwe. Workshops with 60 stakeholders from medicine, agriculture, and environmental science revealed three key benefits: shared knowledge-building, ethical/systems thinking, and practical solutions like surveillance systems and policy reforms.

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is an emerging challenge for sustainability education. This study examines how case vignettes as a tool, when integrated within participatory workshops, foster interdisciplinary collaboration and participatory research, focusing on their application to the complex challenge of AMR. Two one-day participatory research workshops were conducted at higher educational institutions, involving a total of 60 interdisciplinary participants, including 10 educators and 20 students from two universities in Zimbabwe. A thematic analysis using analytical categories based on previous literature resulted in the development of six themes, ranging from developing systems thinking, and thorough decision justification, to co-created knowledge. These themes highlight the potential of case vignette-based workshops to support collaborative problem-solving and knowledge exchange in addressing complex societal challenges like AMR. Such as interdisciplinary engagements, effectively highlighting the complex and "wicked" character of AMR that spans domains of knowledge, ethics, policy, and practical intervention to which each discipline can contribute through the use of integrated case vignettes.

Background: Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a major global health issue heavily influenced by human behavior. Effective communication and awareness-raising are crucial in curbing AMR, with social network sites (SNSs) significantly shaping health behaviors. Despite their potential, current analyses of AMR on SNSs have focused mainly on top-down communication initiatives.

Objective: This study aims to examine AMR on Instagram (Meta Platforms), identifying key actors, content themes, and the nature of the communication to understand how AMR is portrayed and perceived.

Methods: Based on the sender-message-channel-receiver model, this study used content analysis to review publicly accessible posts on Instagram. The data refer to 24 months, focusing on the hashtag “#antibioticresistance.” After cleaning the data, 610 posts (10% of the total 6105) were analyzed.

Results: Content creators were predominantly information drivers or professionals in science and health. Posts frequently featured text-dominated visuals or images of bacteria and laboratory tests. However, the AMR posts were found to be siloed, with limited engagement beyond specific interest groups. The study highlighted the neutrality and accuracy of the content but noted the challenge of reaching a broader audience.

Conclusions: While Instagram serves as a platform for accurate and informative AMR communication, the post of it remains confined to niche groups, limiting its broader impact. To enhance engagement, AMR discussions should be integrated into more general interest content, use visually compelling formats, and encourage institutional participation and interactive user engagement.

Objectives: The paper explores how students’ values and food choices change or adapt depending on the social environment and how students navigate the resulting tensions in food choices and practices when balancing nutrition against social and cultural preferences and sensory experiences.

Design: The study analysed students’ discussions about food and health to explore how values and knowledges are expressed together within them, and shift these across different social environments.

Setting: Community-based study in Zimbabwe in a context many students live in food poverty with long-term implications for physical development and learning.

Methods: Through a re-analysis of group interviews with 120 upper secondary/high school students attending six schools in Zimbabwe, we explored how students create meanings around food and health in different social environments.

Results: Students’ creation of different meanings around food and health depends on the context and the wider social environment. As students discuss food choices and practices within the family, at school and in peer groups, different values and knowledges come to the fore, shifting from responsibility to identity and/or convenience. Importantly, bio-medical, social-cultural and sensory values and knowledges are present in all of students’ discussions across these different social environments.

Conclusion: The concept of value-mobilities is developed to describe students’ ability to navigate tensions between how food and health are understood and valued in different social and cultural settings, and to make food choices and health decisions.