(Un)intended Consequences: A Social Sciences Stocktake of a Decade of Global Action Plan-inspired Antimicrobial Governance

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) remains a major global health threat. Despite increasing international attention, AMR governance has often neglected social and equity dimensions and there is a critical need to synthesise evidence from social sciences and humanities scholarship to devise more people-centred approaches. This paper draws on a stocktake of the intended and unintended consequences of AMR actions at a British Academy symposium in January 2025. The authors apply their findings to the five key objectives of the 2015 Global Action Plan (GAP), which aims to reduce AMR through awareness, surveillance, infection reduction, optimization of antimicrobial use, and research and innovation. Our stocktake reveals a mixed balance sheet. While observing the GAP’s success in mobilising action and investment, analyses also highlight negative consequences resulting from the decontextualised export of governance frameworks that continue to prioritise technical ‘fixes’ over sustainable reforms of production, care, and innovation systems. Failure to embed AMR within broader developmental and environmental challenges has also undermined local buy-in and contributed to a siloed status of AMR. Recommendations for the next phase of GAP include foregrounding equitable interventions, taking a bottom-up and integrated perspective to incorporate local realities and solutions, and creating robust social sciences and humanities feedback loops for global AMR frameworks.