Surveillance of Antimicrobial Resistance Emergence in the Environment

Webcast

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is an emerging threat to human and animal health. Within hospital systems, AMR is often tracked by use of antibiograms and annual reports with resistance data on specific antibiotics among specific pathogens in specific samples. Antibiograms are used to make treatment decisions and identify public health concerns, but data from the non-clinical community is lacking. The creation of wastewater antibiograms will provide more timely surveillance for AMR emergence, as well as provide a new value-added product for the wastewater industry to produce with existing data.

This webcast will focus on the ongoing WRF project 5182, Wastewater-Based Epidemiology and Clinical Surveillance for Antimicrobial Resistance. The presenters will present a powerful detection and quantification approach—a wastewater antibiogram method to analyze the antimicrobial resistance gene (ARG) spatial and temporal distribution in raw sewage samples. This approach will allow wastewater facilities to partner with public health genomic labs, thereby allowing physicians to prepare for the emergence of ARGs in bacterially infected patients. The presenters will also discuss potential intervention actions public health authorities can implement from these data. 

Presenters: 
Thanh H. (Helen) Nguyen, PhD, Professor in Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Rebecca Lee Smith, DVM, MS, PhD, Associate Professor of Epidemiology, College of Veterinary Medicine University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign

Moderators:
Amy Pruden, PhD, W. Thomas Rice Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Virginia Tech University
Lola Olabode, MPH, BCES, Research Principal, The Water Research Foundation