Creating a Youth Manifesto for AMR - encouraging change-makers of the future

Released in Nature Communications, the article describes the co-creation process of the Manifesto which seeks to generate consensus on how equitable engagement of youth can be realised, despite policy, power and funding challenges.

It summarises a two-year body of work from the Quadripartite Working Group on Youth Engagement for AMR, making the case for young people to be actively engaged in the topic of AMR beyond tokenistic awareness-raising activities. 

This working group, which was launched in October 2023, has 14 members, including Dr Jess Mitchell from the Division of Global Agriculture and Food Systems at the University of Edinburgh. The members are from 14 different countries and represent 14 youth-led or youth-serving organisations.

Youth are recognised as ‘change-makers’ within the climate change literature due to their roles in knowledge-transfer at community level, instigating behavioural changes in the longer term. 

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is another global challenge which may benefit from the change-making potential of youth, yet policy, research and action traditionally target adult populations. 

With governments across the world cutting support for AMR action and aid programmes, youth engagement is timely and although youth engagement is clearly no substitute for globally robust aid and funding mechanisms it could offer a route to sustaining the personnel required to operationalise NAPs and other AMR policies. 

Between March and May 2024, the Working Group co-created a Youth Manifesto on AMR.

Co-creators emphasized the urgent need to broaden public understanding of AMR via education for all youth, not just those in human, environmental and animal (One Health) professions. 

Early Manifesto feedback stressed that educational materials should be co-created with, rather than simply delivered to youth, and that dedicated financing for youth engagement, especially in low-and-middle-income countries (LMICs), is essential.

The Manifesto defines four top priorities: Advocacy and Engagement, Education and capacity building, Patient Care (humans and animals) and Addressing AMR with a One Health approach.

Crucially, the Manifesto calls for the inclusion of young people on global decision-making platforms and capacity building initiatives to enable youth-led action against AMR at all levels.

Global Agriculture and Food Systems

Jess Mitchell

Working Group on Youth Engagement

Jess' previous project outputs on AMR in schools