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A project ‘Reducing antibiotic usage in people with self-limiting viral illness’ led by Dr Stephen Ritchie and Associate Professor Mark Thomas in the Department of Molecular Medicine and Pathology, with co-investigators Dr Susan Reid, Dr Sandy Thaggard, Dr Robyn Whittaker, Dr Lily Fraser, Dr Amy Chan, Dr Arier Lee, Dr Emma Best and Professor Bruce Arroll, has been awarded a grant of $1.2 million to conduct a 3 year project aimed at reducing prescribing of antibiotics by GPs for patients with upper respiratory tract infections.

The study will initially focus on learning more about Māori and Pacific people’s opinions regarding antibiotic treatment for URTI, with leadership from Dr Susan Reid and Dr Sandy Thaggard. They have extensive experience in improving the health literacy of Maori and Pacific communities in New Zealand. The team, which includes people with interests in IT solutions for health problems is Dr Robyn Whittaker, general practitioners are Dr Lily Fraser and Professor Bruce Arroll, a pharmacist is Dr Amy Chan and a pediatrician is Dr Emma Best and statistician is Dr Arrier Lee. They will then design resource-efficient interventions to assist Maori and Pacific people and their GPs to reduce the rate of dispensing of antibiotics for self-limiting viral upper respiratory tract infections. Finally, we will test the impact of these interventions on prescribing and dispensing of antibiotics by GPs.

The study’s overall goal is to significantly reduce inappropriate antibiotic prescribing in the community, thus prevent patient harm due to drug adverse effects and slow the rate of spread of antibiotic resistant bacteria.