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 Susan Reid, Sandy Thaggard, Robyn Whittaker, Lily Fraser, Amy Chan, Arier Lee, Emma Best and 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 Susan Reid and Sandy Thaggard, who 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 (Dr Robyn Whittaker), general practitioners (Dr Lily Fraser and Prof Bruce Arroll), a pharmacist (Dr Amy Chan) and a paediatrician (Dr Emma Best) and statistician (Dr Arrier Lee), will then design resource efficient interventions to assist Māori and Pacific people and their GPs to reduce the rate of dispensing of antibiotics for self-limiting viral upper respiratory tract infections. Finally, they will test the impact of these interventions on the prescribing and dispensing of antibiotics by GPs.
The overall goal of the study is to significantly reduce inappropriate antibiotic prescribing in the community, and thus prevent patient harms due to drug adverse effects, and slow the rate of spread of antibiotic resistant bacteria.