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CDC Launches Major Initiative To Decrease Antimicrobial Resistance

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has started a new campaign to target the problem of antimicrobial resistance in health care settings. The "Prevent Antimicrobial Resistance Campaign," which has been endorsed by ASM, was unveiled at the International Conference on Emerging and Infectious Diseases, held in Atlanta in March.

The campaign centers around four strategies that clinicians and other health care workers should follow to prevent or lower the likelihood that antimicrobial resistance will develop. They entail preventing infections, diagnosing and treating infections effectively, using antimicrobial agents wisely, and preventing transmission of infectious agents.

The campaign will feature several programs aimed at preventing the development of antimicrobial resistance among pathogens that commonly infect particular patient populations. Each program will promote these four campaign strategies through 12 action steps that clinicians can implement immediately. The first of these 12-step programs outlines ways of preventing antimicrobial resistance among pathogens that infect hospitalized adults. All action steps represent best practices and are derived from evidence-based guidelines and recommendations developed by CDC and other organizations.

Campaign to Prevent Antimicrobial Resistance in Healthcare Settings

Materials being developed for the campaign include a slide set featuring the 12 action steps and the evidence to support them, posters, brochures, and a pocket-size clinician reminder card listing a particular set of 12 action steps. The campaign also features a website recapping this information where clinicians also may order materials as well as additional information to share with their patients.

"Increased awareness of all who work in health care settings about ways to prevent antimicrobial resistance is vital," says ASM President Abigail Salyers, who is a faculty member at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. "ASM urges everyone in our infectious disease and clinical microbiology communities to support this major CDC effort," she adds.

In the future, CDC will announce similar action steps for clinicians who care for dialysis, emergency room, obstetrical, critical care, and pediatric patients and patients in long-term care facilities.

Antimicrobial-resistant infections in health care settings are a major threat to patient safety. Each year in the United States an estimated 2 million hospitalized people acquire infections that result in more than 90,000 deaths. Bacteria cause more than half of these infections that are resistant to at least one of the antimicrobials commonly used to treat those infections, according to the CDC.

Barbara Hyde
Barbara Hyde is the ASM Communications Director.