16 August 2024
The Trinity Challenge partners with Stanford University in first-of-its-kind global Deliberative Poll on antibiotic resistance
The Trinity Challenge and the Deliberative Democracy Lab at Stanford University today announce ambitious plans for a new Deliberative Polling initiative to uncover public perspectives on antibiotic resistance across the world.
The initial pilot study will engage representative samples of the public in six low- and middle-income countries: Brazil and Colombia; Nigeria and Tanzania; and India and Indonesia. The samples will be polled before and after they deliberate about the policy trade-offs posed by antibiotic resistance. They will meet in moderated small groups and pose questions to panels of competing experts. At the end of the process, they will express their considered judgments about what needs to be done in confidential questionnaires.
They will consider trade-offs such as prioritising the use of antibiotics in food production systems versus a higher price for antibiotic-free meat, how antibiotics should be accessed by humans in farming/agriculture, and which policy interventions should be prioritised for the greatest public benefit.
Professor Dame Sally Davies, Chair, the Trinity Challenge and UK Special Envoy on Antimicrobial Resistance, said: “This polling is an opportunity for us to see what attitudes exist, as well as the information and arguments which work best when communicating with the broader public about antibiotic resistance. While there is scientific consensus about the gravity of antibiotic resistance, we do not see this sense of urgency reflected in policy. Understanding how we can move people to action is key to mitigating the threat posed by the antibiotic emergency.”
Professor Marc Mendelson, Director, the Trinity Challenge, said: “As an infectious disease clinician, one’s understanding of antibiotic resistance and what must be done to mitigate it does not necessarily resonate with opinions of healthcare and other professionals or the general public. I am excited to see how citizens of different low- and middle-income countries deliberate on important trade-off policy issues relating to mitigation of antibiotic resistance.”
Professor James Fishkin, Director of the Deliberative Democracy Lab at Stanford University, said: “Antibiotic resistance is a novel and immensely complex topic. Most people do not understand it, and many do not even know about it, despite its global impact on public health. What would the public really think about these issues if it could focus on them in depth and with good information? If they could discuss them with fellow citizens and panels of experts representing different points of view? That is our agenda in this project. It is the first step in extending the same process on a near-global basis for this crucial public health challenge.”
Deliberative Polling® is a methodology developed by Professor James Fishkin of the Stanford Deliberative Democracy Lab. It has been applied in 150 cases around the world. It gathers insights not only about what the public already thinks but on what it would think about a given issue after engaging in depth with competing arguments and expert opinions about what should be done. The deliberations will be conducted online via the Stanford Online Deliberation Platform. Developed in collaboration with the Stanford Crowdsourced Democracy Team from Management Science and Engineering (Professor Ashish Goel) it has been successfully deployed on smart phones around the world for Deliberative Polling®.
The partnership between the Trinity Challenge and the Deliberative Democracy Lab at Stanford University aims to present the results of the pilot study during the UN General Assembly High-Level meeting on AMR in September. Following this, with the core data from the pilot, funding will be sought to support a wider, global Deliberation Polling initiative with a greater number of countries.
The Trinity Challenge Deliberative Poll on AMR has been made possible through funding from Wellcome and the Novo Nordisk Foundation.
About The Trinity Challenge
The Trinity Challenge (TTC) is a charity supporting the creation of data-driven solutions to help protect against global health threats.
The Trinity Challenge on Antimicrobial resistance received applications from 285 teams in 57 countries and distributed a prize fund of £2.7 million across four winning initiatives.
We believe data and analytics hold the key to building effective, affordable, and scalable solutions to current and future pandemics and health emergencies, and we are committed to working with governments, individuals and organisations across the world, to help improve our resilience against current and future threats to global health.
About the Stanford Deliberative Democracy Lab
The Deliberative Democracy Lab at Stanford University (DDL) is devoted to research about democracy and public opinion obtained through Deliberative Polling® ️and related democratic processes. The method of Deliberative Polling®️ has been used over 150 times in 50+ countries and jurisdictions around the world, at varying levels of government and society. To learn more about the DDL, visit: deliberation.stanford.edu.
