Assessing the public acceptability of proposed policy interventions to reduce the misuse of antibiotics in Australia: A report on two community juries

Abstract

ObjectiveTo elicit the views of well‐informed community members on the acceptability of proposed policy interventions designed to improve community use of antibiotics in Australia.DesignTwo community juries held in 2016.Setting and participantsWestern Sydney and Dubbo communities in NSW, Australia. Twenty‐nine participants of diverse social and cultural backgrounds, mixed genders and ages recruited via public advertising: one jury was drawn from a large metropolitan setting; the other from a regional/rural setting.Main outcome measureJury verdict and rationale in response to a prioritization task and structured questions.ResultsBoth juries concluded that potential policy interventions to curb antibiotic misuse in the community should be directed towards: (i) ensuring that the public and prescribers were better educated about the dangers of antibiotic resistance; (ii) making community‐based human and animal health‐care practitioners accountable for their prescribing decisions. Patient‐centred approaches such as delayed prescribing were seen as less acceptable than prescriber‐centred approaches; both juries completely rejected any proposal to decrease consumer demand by increasing antibiotic prices.ConclusionThese informed citizens acknowledged the importance of raising public awareness of the risks, impacts and costs of antibiotic resistance and placed a high priority on increasing social and professional accountability through restrictive measures. Their overarching aim was that policy interventions should be directed towards creating collective actions and broad social support for changing antibiotic use through establishing and explaining the need for mechanisms to control and support better prescribing by practitioners, while not transferring the burdens, costs and risks of interventions to consumers.

Infection Control in Dentistry and Drug-Resistant Infectious Agents: A Burning Issue. Part 2

“…The prevention of cross infection by adopting guidelines is easily applicable and has had early significant effects on infection prevention and cost saving [53,54] compared to the delayed significant effects due to the sustainable use of antibiotics in dentistry [121]. We reported many concurrent violations and noncompliances in infection prevention, some of which could not necessarily be harmful.…”

An Australian community jury to consider case‐finding for dementia: Differences between informed community preferences and general practice guidelines

“…Outcomes of CJs may not be able to be replicated but methods are reproducible. Recently, two CJs on antimicrobial stewardship were conducted in different settings with similar results suggesting once informed, participants (in different regions but recruited for characteristics relevant to the juror question) may make similar recommendations . Also, careful consideration is taken to select experts with known clinical and research expertise and with differences of opinion (for and against case‐finding).…”

Developing and applying a deductive coding framework to assess the goals of Citizen/Community Jury deliberations

“…Lack of uptake of the recommendation generated from past CJs indicates that policymakers may lack trust in CJ processes—or that CJ sponsors (researchers, policymakers, etc) are not building their translation processes into CJ design . Researchers have conducted multiple CJs, experimented with methods (eg recruitment, presentations of experts, dissemination of materials and quantitative analyses of knowledge) and written reporting templates in an attempt to provide evidence of robustness and stability of decision making . The approach proposed here is an attempt to explore whether CJ deliberations uphold the goals of deliberative process and thus provide another reason for decision makers to trust the outcome of CJ processes.…”