Infographics about antibiotics: making facts accessible
NIHR Academic Clinical Lecturer, Dr Oliver van Hecke, writes about how infographics may be an effective tool to increase parents' understanding about antibiotic use. Oliver's project poster recently won first prize at the South West SAPC meeting in Bristol.
Public misconceptions about antibiotic use persist despite the efforts of antibiotic awareness campaigns. These campaigns have often followed a top-down approach and have not sought input from the public. Communities need to see antibiotic campaign messages as relevant, accessible and important in order to have an influence on health seeking behaviour and antibiotic use.
This project builds directly on a recently published SPCR-funded project exploring how parents perceive and understand antibiotic use and antibiotic resistance. One of the key points to arise from the PAUSE study is that parents struggle to grasp any meaningful understanding of antibiotic use for children. They wanted four things from future antibiotic awareness campaigns:
- Campaigns should be tailored to parents
- They should be based on outcomes that parents can relate to
- Campaigns should reach parents
- They should be in a format that is accessible and one that parents will engage with.
This has recently been echoed by the Wellcome Trust in its report Reframing Antimicrobial Resistance.
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