Welcome to another episode of our podcast at
the Canadian Breakpoint. So as many people know,
we are live at the AMR Symposium this year. So
this is something different I'm doing with this
mini series. And we're really talking about antimicrobial
resistance, but from all different perspectives.
So we've had some researchers, we've had clinicians,
and now we're going to have... Kind of a different
outlook and input from our speaker here. So we
have Harpa Isfield - I'll help you out. Healy?
He's spelled Healy. Thank you. All right. So
Harpa, what brings you to AMR? And can you let
our audience know a little bit about yourself?
Yeah, so I'm a knowledge broker in the area of
infectious disease public health. So I'm a project
manager working with the National Collaborating
Centre for Infectious Diseases. And some people
out there might be familiar with the NCCs and
ours is the only one that's focused on infectious
disease. So normally our audience who we talk
to is public health professionals at many levels.
And this stream of our work, I've been working
on it since about 2016. And this is the only
stream of our work where we have... public, include
public as an audience. We also work more closely
with a lot of organizations that are direct providers
of healthcare. So we have, we've been in a space
for quite a while, like since 20, since actually
the beginning of NCCID, we've always been involved
in some kind of awareness building efforts. I
think it started out as a day actually, ironically,
about just antibiotics. And this campaign that
we've had really growing as a bit of a grassroots
effort, because it doesn't have big dollars,
but it has a lot of passion behind it. And we
call that AMR Aware Canada. And so NCCID has
a role coordinating that collaborative campaign.
And we're here at the symposium because, well,
because conversations are happening here and
we want people to, you know, a lot of the experts.
And people, all the many disciplines are involved,
of course, as you know, in AMR. And we want to
be in the space where there is that multidisciplinary
scope, One Health scope, because we really need
more of the champions and experts in all these
fields to be aware that we do have a campaign
in Canada. Many are looking for, you know, to
make use of educational materials. And there's
a lot of efforts in Canada. And we're trying
to bring those forward under one umbrella of
AMR Aware Canada. So we were newly rebranded
last year. As I mentioned, we've been working
at this NCCID for many years, but it's really
developed more into a more concrete entity that
last year we rebranded and a new website, a new
name, AMR Aware Canada. So that's really come
to a head for us. And so now we're really trying
to get the word out to strengthen this. The collaborative
approach to awareness building is, you know,
it's not a top -down, heavily funded kind of
approach. It's the experts who are the early
adopters that know why AMR matters. Yes. But
they don't have maybe the materials, the resources
to point to, to get that word out. And then...
So obviously we're very familiar from like a
few years back, your team had presented some
of the educational tools, resources of how physicians,
pharmacists, researchers, et cetera, could access
some of these tools. So what's kind of been the
new thing that's been going on or the newer projects
that you guys have been working on? Well, certainly
we know we hear again and again that we need
to tell more stories about AMR. People need to
understand, put a face to that and understand
how that presents in a person's life and what
they do when they're actually told they have.
You know, you have your maybe you're colonized
or you have a resistance infection and they need
maybe they're living in long term care and they
are concerned or they're a caregiver of an elderly
person. Right. How do they need to. control the
spread of that or how do they need to manage
their care. But a patient perspective is something
that can really add a lot of depth and make connections
with people. So this year, we have featured other
stories that have come to us through other organizations,
Health Canada produced some other campaigns like
the antimicrobial resistance. fighters that comes
from Becton Dickinson. They have a series that
gathered stories. We've brought some of those
into our campaign that are on our site, but now
we're actually partnering, co -creating some
stories with patients, but that's something new.
And we have a new news page on our site where
we're, we're trying to be a bit of a voice. for
those who have some educational events new resources
coming out that we can feature so we push those
out in a newsletter people can sign up to stay
in touch and know what's new from those resources
but the news page is also incorporated within
our website that's just another way we can bring
people to the site so that they know they know
this entity exists they can get some of the the
language that we've developed that's more public
friendly on that site so they can make use of
that they can also go to the resource repository
and actually filter last year we've sort of made
improvements to how people can find the resources
right it's filterable by you know is this a patient
handout i need or uh or is it an infographic
or which audience is it for so some of the new
items i'm excited about the stories we have a
sign up button so that it helps us build this
community. Now we have, since Brad talked to
you last year about this, we now have over 2
,000 subscribers to this campaign who will get
that, those updates and that news. So it's a
way to just build the community. And I know,
you know, what lands in people's inboxes isn't
always what they open, but it helps us, you know,
we populate that with, you know, what's going
on with some of the events. We want to hear how
people might use the news. For example, maybe
they want to learn about policy developments
in Canada about AMR. Right. We have a lot of
different collaborators working with us. So what
they feature is very different. Some are working
on games and to make it fun to learn about AMR.
Yeah. Some are working on hard hitting issues
about. war affected or migrants with AMR those
populations and some of the policy needs about
innovation so we try to wide range wide range
but we're trying to bring it together for you
know some access so that people you know spreading
awareness and educating people about AMR we know
that's not everybody's permit they're they're
not thinking of that and they don't even have
time for that in their jobs right so we're trying
to make that easy to access and our collaborators
want to share and make that if you've been in
the session today you heard from Simon Habegger
of Debugs Need Drugs that a wonderful resource
numerous languages yeah and he's making that
you know available so we we need to leverage
those tools in Canada and know you know People
want to know where the Canadian products are,
what's relevant to their audiences. And we can
go to those and we want to make that easier to
find. And so all of these tools, it's amazing
that so much has actually happened since we last
heard about all of this, which is fantastic and
so much growth in the area. So congratulations
for such a great achievement. And in terms of
kind of for our audience, just so maybe some
are not aware of like where to find these resource
tools, do we have a certain link or website?
Yeah, so people can go to amraware .ca. which
of course stands for Antimicrobial Resistance
Aware Canada, AMR Aware Canada. And yeah, so
that's the main portal. And you'll see listed
many of our partners there. We have over 20 partners
listed and more we haven't yet listed, but so
we're growing this campaign. And that's part
of why I'm here at the symposium, really reach
out to other collaborators. So yeah, go to that
website. go to the campaign page for something
to share during World Antimicrobial Awareness
Week. We've got volunteers within this collaboration
who have been working to light landmarks across
Canada. We have 31 at this point. And so I have
several days and, you know, a week until almost
until the close of World AMR Awareness Week.
Yeah. So that's just, you know, some of the...
The activities we do, of course, are just short
-term things for the week. But yeah, check out
the resource page, the news. But the stewardship
AMR, sort of PAN AMS, is the name of our webinar
series. And that's ongoing through the year.
So despite the fact that we do have this big
push for the world, you know, the WOW event.
We try to bring practitioners together often
from very disparate settings. Some are in low
-resource settings in rural areas. Others are
champions out of maybe hospital settings and
tertiary care. But we want to hear from a range
of players out there what stewardship looks like
in their setting, how they got that. going. And
so we've developed this webinar series to spark
some conversations and presentations. So the
CanAMS is something that's ongoing that people
can look for also through that same website.
Okay, awesome. Thanks so much, Harpa. We really
appreciate all of your guys' efforts and you
coming on the podcast to tell us some updates
with NCCID. So it's always fantastic to hear
all the work you guys are doing. And thank you
for supporting us clinicians with this, because
as you mentioned, we're busy and want somebody
to kind of handhold us through this. And I think
you guys are doing a fantastic job. So thank
you. Yeah, very great. Thanks for letting us
speak today. Yeah, of course. Thanks.