Humanities and social sciences in One Health: Promoting just and responsible antibiotic behaviour in society

Raising public awareness about antibiotic resistance and proper antibiotic use is a necessary but insufficient means to change behaviour. This is because antibiotic resistance is a complex phenomenon influenced by many factors.

This three-year project will be carried out in Sweden, Italy, and Bulgaria with the purpose of developing a context-sensitive transnational public health approach to investigating the values, norms, behavioural and sociocultural determinants of antibiotic resistance and fostering socially responsible antibiotic behaviour.

Specifically, it aims to:exploring the values, norms, and behavioural and sociocultural determinants of antibiotic misuse, abuse and other behaviour through the One Health perspective;investigating the role of gender perspectives, trust, prosociality, biospherism, and other psychological constructs, social norms, and values to explain antibiotic behaviour;testing behavioural and sociocultural determinants influence on antibiotic behaviour and public responsiveness to social justice and personal and collective responsibility;developing a normatively robust conceptualisation of social justice and responsibility in the antibiotic resistance discourse;creating a multi-layered protocol for investigating values, norms, and behavioural and sociocultural determinants of antibiotic resistance and sharing recommendations for context-sensitive transnational research, policy strategies, and communication.