Engagement with professionals and the community How have we integrated the investigated issues into our project?

13th of August 2018

Gold Medal Criteria

This report will explore how our team engaged with the local community and experts in the field to learn about their views towards phage therapy and integrate these ideas into our final project. We engaged with x experts, as well as holding our own discussion group with 7 members of the local community. These were the key findings from these engagement activities:

Discussion Group

Our team held a discussion group with seven members of the local community. The objective of this discussion was to understand how much people understand about antibiotic treatment and how they feel about phage therapy. From this, we would analyse the views and opinions to identify how we could integrate these opinions into our project, thus having a more purposeful final product.

To provide some context, 4/7 participants were from a science background and 6/7 participants had been treated with antibiotics. When exploring how often our participants took antibiotics, the answers varied, from twice in my life to once every 6 months. The common theme that we identified was that none of the participants are regularly prescribed antibiotics every month or every week.

The next question focussed on understand how this public felt about taking antibiotics. One participant (non-science background) commented that they were a bit nervous about antibiotic resistance and linked this to an article from two years ago in USA, where a man expended all the antibiotics that could be used. This led the group to discuss the link between media and emotions and how the media has impacted on publics’ attitude towards antibiotics. A common theme that came up was that people are now more aware of the overuse of antibiotics thinks to the media- especially as a younger generation. This highlights how different generations may have different attitudes to antibiotics. One participant gave an example of a relative, who when they visit the GP, they are not satisfied unless they are prescribed something for the illness, thus reflecting differing generation attitudes. The follow up question about whether antibiotics were efficient also led to opinions that people think they are a miracle cure for everything but that they are actually less efficient now than they were in the past. Finally, the segment on antibiotics focussed on the pros and cons. The participants identified the main benefit of antibiotics, that they cure illness while acknowledging the limitations of side effects and the fact that you can’t tell if you are allergic to an antibiotic until you take it, thus putting yourself at potential risk.