Amanda Nedved, Children’s Mercy Kansas City was recently awarded a two-year, $200,510 Investigator Studies Program (MISP) grant from Merck. 

Dr. Nedved, along with co-Primary Investigator Rana El Feghaly MD MSCI, Infectious Diseases, Children’s Mercy Kansas City, will use the funding on the project “Improving Health Equity in Antibiotic Prescribing for Respiratory Infections in Pediatric Urgent Care Clinics: a Multi-Center Quality Improvement Collaborative.”

Despite numerous studies confirming that health inequities in antibiotic prescribing behaviors exist, the drivers contributing to these inequities are not well studied.

Dr. Nedved was a leader on the SPUC’s multi-site quality improvement (QI) collaborative with the CDC and the Antibiotic Resistance Action Center, which successfully reduced unnecessary antibiotics and demonstrated how to use publicly available resources. The previous collaborative, however, did not evaluate the effect AMS interventions had on health equity.

The team’s collaborative will use QI methodology to identify primary drivers of health equity in antimicrobial stewardship (AMS) and develop, implement, and study the effect of interventions to narrow the existing gap in health inequities. Over 30 sites have enrolled in the project which will run through October 2024. 

“Differences in antibiotic prescribing for different groups of people has been described in multiple studies. ” said Dr. Nedved. “The reason behind these differences is likely multifactorial. While implicit bias often plays a role in heath inequities, we plan to thoroughly explore all contributing factors to these differences before considering effective ways to improve health equity in antimicrobial stewardship.”