Antimicrobial resistance National Action Plans and the role of microbial genomics with with Kate Baker and Tess Johnson

Getting into the actual topic of conversations, your paper focuses on genomics in the context of the UK National Action Plan, or AMR, which is what you've been talking about now Kate but before we actually discuss what you talk about in the paper could you briefly explain what these national action plans are for those listeners who might not be familiar with them and also how they fit into the broader context of the WHO global action plan and the update of which for 2026 to 2030 has just recently been adopted at the 79th World Health Assembly.

So National Action Plans are these nationally developed strategic policy documents.

What they aim to do is to set out what countries want to do over a set period of time to really take action themselves on antimicrobial resistance, AMR.

So sometimes we call them NAPs.

90% of countries have now developed these NAPs and initially they were developed out of the Global Action Plan on AMR 2015. released by the WHO.

And these NAPs are aiming to align pretty well with global priorities that are set out across a number of different pillars.

So they do vary country by country, but generally the idea is that they'll have something in there about antibiotic innovation.

There will be something in there about AMR surveillance, about understanding the burden of AMR, about optimizing antimicrobial use.

and a number of different areas and so they're redeveloped and they're evaluated every now and then as well.

Of course AMR is something that is affecting us globally and providing this what we might think of as a global public good of antimicrobial effectiveness and of healthy microbial ecosystems is something that we all need to contribute to.

So the National Action Plans offer an opportunity for countries to do that in a context-specific, targeted way that also meets their national needs.

But the goal is that they will all be aligned to some extent to aim to address global priorities.

So of course, those priorities and needs shift over time.

And what we've really seen in this new global action plan that was released just earlier this year was more of a focus on one health and prevention, interestingly.

So in the old global action plan, we had a little bit more focus on clinical settings and clinical care, a little less focus on wash infrastructure, vaccination, biosecurity, and environmental initiatives.

So this new global action plan is aiming to coordinate action and direct it in a little bit more of that preventive way, with also more structures surrounding sustainability and financing, which is really interesting.

We're hoping that this global action plan will allow us to hold countries better to account for taking action that is dictated by their own national action plans.

Of course, there's some time needed to update all of the country's national action plans and the UK has actually done that relatively recently.

So we now have our new national action, newish action plans from 2024 onwards.

And that aligns pretty well with this new global action plan.

It does have an emphasis on One Health.

It does have an emphasis on prevention.

But what we're really aiming to do is to ensure that genomics can contribute along those goals and to highlight the ways that genomics can can contribute.

And that goes for updates that are in alignment with the new global action plan as well.

So although we developed the paper before the release of the finalized global action plan, we have been, I think, quite well aligned, would you say, Kate, in the ways that we have thought about how genomics can help and the ways that that contributes to some of those goals that are more emphasized in the new global action plan?