A new toolkit is bringing design thinking into the fight against antimicrobial resistance (AMR), offering a practical and accessible way to tackle this One Health challenge. The toolkit is the result of a SAAFE Kickstart project involving the University of Queensland, UniSA and the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP).

“The toolkit will be a valuable resource for raising awareness of the environmental dimensions of AMR,” says Ludovic Bernaudat, head of UNEP’s Global Environment Facility Chemicals and Green Chemistry Unit.

Design thinking, a problem-solving approach widely used in the business and technology sectors, has recently become more common in the public health space.

“It lends itself nicely to situations involving messy complexities of communities, policies, governments and individual behaviours,” says Professor Lisa Hall, Professor of Epidemiology at the University of Queensland, the project lead.

Design thinking provides a structured process for finding solutions to real-world problems. It starts with empathy and identifying people’s ‘pain points’.

“This helps to teach you not to jump to a solution before you’ve thought more deeply about people’s pain, empathised with them, and understood the actual cause of the problem,” says Dr Yukiko Ezure, a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Queensland and a key member of the project team.

From there, users brainstorm potential solutions, shortlist selected ideas, develop prototypes, and test them. Design thinking is intended to be efficient and iterative, enabling users to find feasible solutions more quickly.

Although interest in design thinking is growing, the project team identified a clear gap. “There are hundreds of tools and resources, but a lot of them are behind paywalls and very business-centric,” says Prof. Hall. “They’re not usable in low-income countries or in One Health settings.”

The team started by searching peer-reviewed literature, textbooks and online resources to find examples of design thinking across public health, education and business.

Although they found some relevant materials, practical advice on using them was lacking. “Giving people a template is not very helpful if they don’t know how to use it,” says Prof. Hall.

They also found few useful case studies. “There was very little reported on how design thinking was incorporated, which tools were used, and how effective they were,” says Dr Ezure.

The team compiled existing tools and created new resources relevant to a One Health setting. They tested their approach in a pilot workshop in Bangkok, where UNEP brought together 18 participants from government, academia and industry groups across eight Asia-Pacific countries. Over three days in February, the participants used several design thinking activities to explore challenges relating to the environmental dimensions of AMR.

Feedback from surveys conducted before, during and after the workshop is now informing further refinements of the toolkit.

“One of the most important lessons from the Bangkok workshop is that it’s less about the toolkit itself, and more about the mindset required to get the most out of each phase,” says Dr Ezure.

The refined toolkit will be introduced at the EDAR8 conference in Brisbane in August. In a half-day workshop, the project team will use a ‘train the trainer’ approach to teach others how to use the toolkit.

“We want to expose people to design thinking and show them how they could use it in their own work,” says Prof. Hall.

UNEP is keen for the toolkit to be used worldwide. “Lots of SAAFE’s work can be disseminated and replicated in the countries where we are working,” says Ludovic Bernaudat.

Looking ahead, the team hopes the toolkit can support long-term capacity building. Plans are underway to build an interactive online repository, where users can share tools, case studies and lessons learned.

“The goal is to grow a global collaborative around design thinking for AMR,” says Prof. Hall.