Community Dialogue Approach to Address Antibiotic Resistance in Bangladesh, 2017-2018

Community engagement approaches that have impacted on health outcomes are often time intensive, small-scale and require high levels of financial and human resources. They can be difficult to sustain and scale-up in low resource settings. Given the reach of health services into communities in low income countries, the health system provides a valuable and potentially sustainable entry point that would allow for scale-up of community engagement interventions. This study explored the process of developing an embedded approach to community engagement taking the global challenge of antibiotic resistance as an example. We undertook detailed formative research through a qualitative study to explore the most appropriate mechanisms through which to embed the intervention within the existing health system and community infrastructure, and via a quantitative survey to understand patterns of knowledge, attitudes and practices regarding antibiotic usage in humans.