healthcare-associated infections (hai) program

U.S. Antibiotic Awareness Week 2024

CDC Antibiotic Awareness Week 2024 Fighting Antimicrobial Resistance Takes All of Us

Go Purple for U.S. Antibiotic Awareness Week 2024!

Preventing antimicrobial resistance takes all of us!

U.S. Antibiotic Awareness Week (USAAW) is an annual observance from November 18th – 24th and provides an opportunity to raise awareness of the importance of appropriate antibiotic and antifungal use and the threat antimicrobial resistance poses to people, animals, plants, and their shared environment.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) theme for USAAW 2024 focuses on the One Health approach to prevent antimicrobial resistance, recognizing that the health of people is closely connected to the health of animals, planets, and their shared environment.

Learn more about actions you can take to fight antimicrobial resistance.

To learn more about One Health in California and the United States, go to:

How are California facilities celebrating U.S. Antibiotics Awareness Week 2024?

Education	Antelope Valley Medical Center is conducting a half-day symposium on antimicrobial stewardship topics on the Friday before USAAW. Community Memorial Hospital will be providing stewardship education around reducing their Clostridioides difficile cases and showcasing a CDC webinar on resistant organisms. They will also be hosting bug questions on first line with prizes and have a plan to track physicians' antibiotic choices, doses and durations. Kern Medical will be providing education to providers, staff and patients through a variety of interactive tabling events, facility-wide trivia games and screensavers. Kindred Hospital San Diego is posting flyers ;for ASP awareness throughout their hospital. Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital is sending out an informative newsletter about stewardship. Last year they hosted a forum with multiple lectures and discussions of stewardship topics. Sutter Health Mills-Penisula Medical Center will have a #GoPurple campaign at their hospital by advertising using their internal website, listservs and flyers around the hospital. They will be encouraging the staff wear purple on a designated date during Antibiotic Awareness Week to show their support. They will also be setting up a table with posters, flyers and infographics in a highly visited location of their hospital so they can target both staff and patients. As the winter season is near, they will focus on people understanding that antibiotics are for bacterial infections (not viral) and the importance of finishing the full course of antibiotics if prescribed. The pharmacy staff at Sutter Maternity and Surgery Center of Santa Cruz will be wearing purple and posting a picture with antimicrobial stewardship information in their site’s monthly newsletter.

Outreach	Antimicrobial Stewardship team at Loma Linda University Children’s Hospital will be wearing purple and distributing USAAW stickers. They will also be utilizing the USAAW toolkit, collaborating with their health system to create short videos for social media, posting digital street signage on primary streets around their campus, and posting digital signs throughout their institution. Lastly, they will have USAAW screensavers on every computer, a “News of the Week” article that links to their newsletter with a photo of the antimicrobial stewardship team and will distribute their institution’s antimicrobial stewardship newsletter on hot topics for USAAW. St Francis Medical Center is providing education to their ASP committee and medical staff through monthly in-service meetings and letters. During USAAW in November, they will be displaying an antimicrobial awareness screensaver visible to staff and visitors. IV to PO reminders will also be displayed to help conserve IVF shortages.
Dashboard & Protocols	San Mateo Medical Center will be highlighting their antibiotic stewardship dashboard and reports available in Epic, their new electronic health record system, with a focus on outcomes highlighted at the recent ID week. UCLA Health will be focusing on promoting conversion to oral antimicrobials from IV, given the critical IV fluid shortage, and promoting shorter durations.