CAMRIA – West Norwegian Center for Antibiotic Resistance

The Trond Mohn Foundation has, together with the University of Bergen, Haukeland University Hospital and Stavanger University Hospital, established the research center CAMRIA (Combatting Anti-Microbial Resistance with Interdisciplinary Approaches).

“The center’s premise is that medical scientists and biologists have largely driven antibiotic resistance research. We want to combine social science, informatics, and mathematics knowledge with medical knowledge to learn more about how and why resistance spreads.”, says the head of the center professor Nina Langeland, a specialist in infectious disease medicine.

“Our goal is to engage researchers across disciplines and to use the entire population in Western Norway to find out how antimicrobial resistance is spread, and how to get health professionals, politicians and the population to come together to reduce unnecessary antibiotic use. People’s attitudes to antibiotic use must also be included in the research at the center, and the Norwegian Citizen Panel participates in the research to study this in more detail.”

Three research projects have received funding from the center. Each project received 6 million NOK from the Trond Mohn Foundation and a corresponding amount from the respective host institution.

The projects are:

•  Risk communication and -perception of AMR in the public and among healthcare workers (Media and AMR), PI Ingrid Smith, Haukeland University Hospital
•     Surveillance and Metagenomic tracking of Antimicrobial Resistance Genes IN environmental and clinical samples using machine learning approaches (MARGIN), PI Randi Bertelsen, University of Bergen
•     Learning and predicting the pathways of AMR evolution with hypercubic inference (HyperEvol), PI Iain Johnston, University of Bergen

Read about the establishment of the center and the announcement of the research projects here.