PERSPECTIVE article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Infectious Diseases: Epidemiology and Prevention
This article is part of the Research TopicConfronting Antimicrobial Resistance: Trends, Interventions, and Socio-Economic ImpactsView all articles
Bridging AMR Knowledge Gaps and Improving Policy Implementation: A Perspective on the Role of Community Engagement in Africa
Provisionally accepted
Kartik Mihir Mishra1
A. Tracie Muraya2
Niniola Williams3Tapiwanashe Kujinga4
Raphael Chanda5
Estelle Mbadiwe6Hafeez Hamza7Kayla M. Strong1Geneviève Boily-Larouche1
Arne Ruckert1*- 1Global Strategy Lab, Toronto, Canada
- 2ReAct Africa, Nairobi, Kenya
- 3Dr. Ameyo Stella Adadevoh (DRASA) Health Trust, Abuja, Nigeria
- 4Pan-African Treatment Access Movement, Harare, Zimbabwe
- 5REACT AFRICA, Lusaka, Zambia
- 6Ducit Blue Foundation, Abuja, Nigeria
- 7Ducit Blue Foundation, Nairobi, Kenya
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is an escalating global threat, posing a serious challenge to public health and medical and social advancements. Top-down research methods and policy implementation approaches have fallen short in capturing the complexities of AMR transmission and supporting effective policy implementation, including in diverse and resource-constrained settings. This perspective article suggests that community engagement has the potential to improve AMR outcomes by generating more community-relevant, context-specific AMR knowledge, providing novel data and evidence for action. We further note that locally rooted civil society organizations (CSOs) are essential to fostering relevance, acceptability, and effectiveness of AMR interventions, as well as engendering strong commitment to AMR policy development and implementation. We focus on the role that lived experiences and participatory research approaches, such as citizen science, can play in generating locally grounded AMR knowledge, as well as how community engagement can facilitate trust and a sense of ownership surrounding AMR policies among community members. We also note the potential of community engagement to identify and address equity and cross-sectoral coordination challenges and contribute to more equitable and sustainable AMR policy implementation. Drawing on successful initiatives in Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Malawi, and Kenya, and acknowledging the role of advocacy by CSOs, we demonstrate the potential of community-driven approaches to transform AMR responses and human, animal, and environmental health-related outcomes, and note that to be successful, this community engagement must be genuine, meaningful, inclusive, and transparent.
Keywords: Antimicrobial resistance (AMR), Community Engagement and One Health inAfrica, citizen science, Equity, implementation, partnerships
Received: 21 Jul 2025; Accepted: 12 Nov 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Mishra, Muraya, Williams, Kujinga, Chanda, Mbadiwe, Hamza, Strong, Boily-Larouche and Ruckert. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Arne Ruckert, arne.ruckert@globalstrategylab.org
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.