Study title

These three data sets comprise each a provincial-level representative rural survey of adults in Chiang Rai and Salavan, and a two-round census survey with a three-month interval in five villages across the two sites (3 in Chiang Rai, 2 in Salavan). The surveys were implemented by 10-member survey teams in each country between November 2017 and April 2018. Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a global health threat that endangers the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals, especially Goal 3 on 'Good Health and Well-Being'; Leading UK and global strategy papers aiming at improving people's antibiotic usage to fight and prevent AMR thereby focus exclusively on awareness-raising campaigns, but this narrow approach suffers from conceptual, methodological, and empirical weaknesses. In response, our study intends to improve the understanding of patients' antibiotic-related health behaviour to inspire more targeted and unconventional interventions in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Speaking to the themes of "awareness and engagement" and "informal markets and access to antibiotics" we will investigate three research questions: (1) What are the manifestations and determinants of problematic antibiotic use in patients' healthcare-seeking pathways? (2) Will people's exposure to a behavioural health systems intervention diffuse or dissipate within a network of competing healthcare practices? (3) Which proxy indicators facilitate the detection of problematic antibiotic behaviours across and within communities? Our interdisciplinary approach frames behaviour within a shared activity space. By drawing on theories and tools from public health, medical anthropology, sociology, and development economics, and by focusing on vulnerable rural dwellers in the DAC countries Thailand and Laos, we will be able to generate innovative and unprecedentedly detailed open-access survey data on antibiotic-related behaviour and its social, economic, and spatial determinants. We...