England’s first-of-its-kind social marketing and communications campaign, the Keep Antibiotics Working initiative, has shown significant success in enhancing public knowledge about antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and reshaping attitudes towards inappropriate antibiotic use. The campaign achieved this by focusing its messaging on discouraging undue patient expectations for an antibiotic prescription and on bolstering the confidence of General Practitioners (GPs) when declining such inappropriate requests. Findings from the study, published in Eurosurveillance, showed an increasing recognition of the campaign and a more profound understanding of antibiotic use amongst respondents.
The campaign evaluation was carried out by studying responses to interviews conducted before and after each wave of the campaign’s advertising in the years 2017, 2018, and 2019. Researchers observed a considerable rise in prompted recognition of the campaign, from 68% in 2018 to 74% in 2019, especially among mothers of children between 0 and 16 years old, who were identified as a key target group. Participants’ comprehension of antibiotic usage also improved, reflected in the increase of respondents who affirmed the statement, ‘Antibiotics will stop working for you if taken for the wrong things’, from 69.1% before the campaign to 77.6% post-campaign. Moreover, the recognition that unnecessary usage of antibiotics exposes individuals and their families to the risk of antibiotic-resistant infections rose from 80.5% to 86.1%. Additionally, there was a growth in the concern about AMR for themselves or their children among the respondents.
The campaign also provided strong support for GPs by equipping them to confidently decline unnecessary requests for antibiotics. This was reflected in the willingness of patients to abstain from demanding antibiotics unduly. Significantly, this campaign, with its integrated approach and strategic messaging, surpassed the recognition levels of previous national antibiotic awareness initiatives, achieving its key aims of shifting knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors towards appropriate antibiotic usage and reducing the burden on GPs facing antibiotic prescription pressures.