Skip Navigation


JAC Advance Access originally published online on December 18, 2008
Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy 2009 63(2):230-237; doi:10.1093/jac/dkn508
This Article
Right arrow Full Text Freely available
Right arrow FREE Full Text (PDF) Freely available
Right arrow All Versions of this Article:
63/2/230    most recent
dkn508v1
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Similar articles in PubMed
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to My Personal Archive
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrow Search for citing articles in:
ISI Web of Science (5)
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Right arrow Disclaimer
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Edgar, T.
Right arrow Articles by Palamé, M. J.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
PubMed
Right arrow PubMed Citation
Right arrow Articles by Edgar, T.
Right arrow Articles by Palamé, M. J.
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us  
What's this?

© The Author 2008. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the British Society for Antimicrobial Chemotherapy. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Leading articles

Sustainability for behaviour change in the fight against antibiotic resistance: a social marketing framework

Timothy Edgar1,*, Stephanie D. Boyd2 and Megan J. Palamé1

1 Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, Emerson College, 120 Boylston Street, Boston, MA 02116, USA 2 Alliance for the Prudent Use of Antibiotics, 2nd Floor, 75 Kneeland Street, Boston, MA 02111, USA

* Corresponding author. Tel: +1-617-824-8743; Fax: +1-617-824-8735; E-mail: timothy_edgar{at}emerson.edu

Antibiotic resistance is one of today's most urgent public health problems, threatening to undermine the effectiveness of infectious disease treatment in every country of the world. Specific individual behaviours such as not taking the entire antibiotic regimen and skipping doses contribute to resistance development as does the taking of antibiotics for colds and other illnesses that antibiotics cannot treat. Antibiotic resistance is as much a societal problem as it is an individual one; if mass behaviour change across the population does not occur, the problem of resistance cannot be mitigated at community levels. The problem is one that potentially can be solved if both providers and patients become sufficiently aware of the issue and if they engage in appropriate behaviours. Although a number of initiatives have been implemented in various parts of the world to elicit behaviour change, results have been mixed, and there is little evidence that trial programmes with positive outcomes serve as models of sustainability. In recent years, several scholars have suggested social marketing as the framework for behaviour change that has the greatest chance of sustained success, but the antibiotic resistance literature provides no specifics for how the principles of social marketing should be applied. This paper provides an overview of previous communication-based initiatives and offers a detailed approach to social marketing to guide future efforts.

Keywords: campaigns , communication , interventions , audiences


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us    What's this?




Disclaimer: Please note that abstracts for content published before 1996 were created through digital scanning and may therefore not exactly replicate the text of the original print issues. All efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, but the Publisher will not be held responsible for any remaining inaccuracies. If you require any further clarification, please contact our Customer Services Department.