Dr Sarah Golding: More interdisciplinary training for researchers is key to tackling environmental problems

An Early Career Perspective on the Value of Interdisciplinary Training Networks details Sarah’s reflections on the Medical Research Foundation’s National PhD Training Programme in Antimicrobial Resistance Research.

Interdisciplinary working is vital for tackling complex environmental challenges, such as antimicrobial resistance (AMR). To coincide with this year’s World AMR Awareness Week, she shared with us some of the complexity of AMR and the need for interdisciplinary, co-produced solutions.  

Antimicrobials are vital medicines that underpin modern medical, veterinary and agricultural practices. We use antimicrobials to treat infections in humans, plants and animals that are caused by different microbes (e.g., bacteria, viruses and fungi). 

But using antimicrobials – especially when they are not needed – can help to drive AMR in microbes. When an infection is caused by AMR-microbes the infection can be much harder – sometimes impossible – to treat. AMR is considered the quintessential One Health challenge and represents a growing and urgent threat to the health of humans and other animals.  

Credit: Jeshoots Pexel

Tackling AMR is complex and requires contributions from multiple disciplines and sectors. There are several strategies  for that can help reduce AMR, including changing when and how antimicrobials are used, reducing the global burden of infectious disease, developing new antimicrobials, and preventing environmental contamination.  

The social sciences can contribute to these interdisciplinary understandings of how to tackle AMR. For example, during my PhD, I explored beliefs about AMR and antimicrobial usage among UK-based veterinarians, farmers and veterinary students, to understand how psychological, social and environmental factors can influence antimicrobial usage in farm animals.  

Crucially, AMR is happening within the context of the triple planetary crisis (pollution and waste, climate change, and biodiversity loss). Human usage of antimicrobials is driving increased AMR, which is adding to the burden of human-induced antimicrobial pollution in the environment. The burden from AMR is set to increase as the climate changes and more species become threatened or extinct, as this will change patterns of infectious disease and further the spread of AMR-genes amongst microbial populations.  

We also need to recognise that – like other environmental challenges – the burden of AMR does not fall equally. The ‘access-excess’ challenge associated with antimicrobials highlights global inequalities in access to health care. In some communities, people cannot access the life-saving drugs that are needed for themselves or their animals. In other instances, antimicrobials are too freely available and are ‘over-used’.  

Credit: Hush Naidoo Unsplash

Reducing the burden of AMR requires co-produced solutions, adapted to local contexts. Researchers, practitioners, policymakers and communities need to collaborate across disciplines and sectors to help societies use these vital medicines more effectively. Solutions will need to integrate perspectives from human, animal, plant, microbial and environmental specialists. To support this, it is vital that funders and organisations support researchers to engage in interdisciplinary training opportunities.  

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