Healthcare System Distrust and Non-Prescription Antibiotic Use: A Cross-Sectional Survey of Adult Antibiotic Users

Antibiotic resistance is a major public health concern driven by antibiotic overuse. Antibiotic stewardship programs are often limited to clinical settings and do little to address non-prescription antibiotic use in community settings. This study investigates the association between non-prescription...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Antibiotics (Basel) 2023-01, Vol.12 (1), p.79
Main Authors: Hawkes, Brooke A, Khan, Sana M, Bell, Melanie L, Guernsey de Zapien, Jill, Ernst, Kacey C, Ellingson, Katherine D
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Antibiotic resistance
Antibiotics
Antimicrobial agents
antimicrobial resistance
antimicrobial stewardship
Cross-sectional studies
Health care
Health care policy
Knowledge
Medical research
non-prescription antibiotic use
Polls & surveys
Public health
Regression models
Self-medication
Sensitivity analysis
Surveys
Trust
trust in healthcare system
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Antibiotic resistance is a major public health concern driven by antibiotic overuse. Antibiotic stewardship programs are often limited to clinical settings and do little to address non-prescription antibiotic use in community settings. This study investigates the association between non-prescription antibiotic use and healthcare system distrust in the United States and Mexico. An online survey was deployed in the United States and Mexico with enhanced sampling through in-person recruiting in the border region. Non-prescription antibiotic use was defined as having bought or borrowed non-prescription oral or injectable antibiotics within the last 3 years. The survey included a previously validated 10-item scale to measure healthcare system distrust. Logistic regression was used to model the use of non-prescription antibiotics by the level of healthcare system distrust, adjusted for demographic characteristics and antibiotic knowledge. In total, 568 survey participants were included in the analysis, 48.6% of whom had used non-prescription oral or injectable antibiotics in the last 3 years. In the fully adjusted regression model, the odds of using non-prescription antibiotics were 3.2 (95% CI: 1.8, 6.1) times higher for those in the highest distrust quartile versus the lowest. These findings underscore the importance of community-based antibiotic stewardship and suggest that these programs are particularly critical for communities with high levels of healthcare system distrust.
ISSN:2079-6382
2079-6382
DOI:10.3390/antibiotics12010079