Mapping socioeconomic factors driving antimicrobial resistance in humans: An umbrella review
Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is one of the biggest public health challenges of our time. National Action Plans have failed so far to effectively address socioeconomic drivers of AMR, including the animal and environmental health dimensions of One Health. The objective of this paper was to map what socioeconomic drivers of AMR exist in the literature with quantitative evidence.
An umbrella review was undertaken across Medline, Embase, Global Health, and Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, supplemented by a grey literature search on Google Scholar. Review articles demonstrating a methodological search strategy for socioeconomic drivers of AMR were included. Two authors extracted drivers from each review article which were supported by quantitative evidence. Drivers were grouped thematically and summarised narratively across the following three layers of society: People & Public, System & Environment, and Institutions & Policies.
The search yielded 6300 articles after deduplication, with 23 review articles included. 27 individual thematic groups of drivers were identified. The People & Public dimensions contained the following themes: age, sex, ethnicity, migrant status, marginalisation, sexual behaviours, socioeconomic status, educational attainment, household composition, maternity, personal hygiene, lifestyle behaviours. System & Environment yielded the following themes: household transmission, healthcare occupation, urbanicity, day-care attendance, environmental hygiene, regional poverty, tourism, animal husbandry, food supply chain, water contamination, and climate. Institutions & Policies encompassed poor antibiotic quality, healthcare financing, healthcare governance, and national income. Many of these contained bidirectional quantitative evidence, hinting at conflicting pathways by which socioeconomic factors drive AMR.
This umbrella review maps socioeconomic drivers of AMR with quantitative evidence, providing a macroscopic view of the complex pathways driving AMR. This will help direct future research and action on socioeconomic drivers of AMR.
Gunnar Ljungqvist, Robin van Kessel, Elias Mossialos, Victoria Saint, Jelena Schmidt, Alexander Mafi, Alison Shutt, Anuja Chatterjee, Esmita Charani, Michael Anderson (2025) Mapping socioeconomic factors driving antimicrobial resistance in humans: An umbrella review, One Health, Volume 20, 2025, 100986. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.onehlt.2025.100986 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352771425000229
