Comunicación oral en 7th European Conference on Service-Learning in Higher Education

24 de septiembre de 2024

The threat of antimicrobial resistance has been set by the World Health Organization into its priorities for immediate action (WHO, 2014). Antibiotics are our therapeutic arsenal against infectious diseases, saving millions of lives every year worldwide. However, a misuse of these valuable drugs in environmental, animal and human health over the last decades has led to the expansion of multi-resistant bacteria, responsible for over 1.000.000 deaths yearly. As prominent keys to fight antibiotic resistance stand: (i) to promote awareness of the problem in the population, leading to a rational and effective use of antibiotics, and (ii) to boost research in this field for the development of future antibiotics.
MicroMundo is the partner strategy in Spain and Portugal of the Tiny Earth initiative in the USA. Following a Service-Learning (SL) program at 30 Universities, Undergraduate Students lead offcampus research teams at Secondary and High Schools following a Citizen Science experimental program to isolate new antimicrobial activities from environmental soil samples. At each School, the experiments are coordinated by a MicroMundo team, usually five university students led and tutored by a Faculty member. In four or five two-hour laboratory sessions and an additional final celebration session, teenager researchers are trained in microbiological techniques to similar to those used by pharmaceutical companies in the past to isolate antibiotic-producing microorganisms
(Valderrama et al., 2018).
The team at the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM) was pioneer worldwide in implementing this student-sourcing research project by Service-Learning in 2016. With the aid of the Spanish National Plan for Antibiotic Resistance (PRAN) and the Spanish Society for Microbiology (SEM), the program successfully spread to many other Universities in Spain and Portugal. Here we present the MicroMundo experience at UCM as a successful strategy to create scientific culture in One Health and antimicrobial resistance in the community. Every year, we involve an average of 40 Faculty Researchers and over 150 University Students in a SL program that works on 30-40
Secondary or High Schools in the Madrid area. The MicroMundo@UCM teams engage every year over 600 young researchers in the project, thus integrating various educational levels and inspiring vocations for STEM higher education in teenagers. Besides collecting putative new antibiotic producers of interest for the scientific community, the MicroMundo teams work on two main objectives: (i) to create scientific culture on preventive action to fight the spread of antibiotic resistance in society, thus contributing to scientific literacy; (ii) to inspire vocations in young students for research and development in the STEM areas, with emphasis in women and populations with limited opportunities

	Departamento de Microbiología y Parasitología. Facultad de Farmacia. Universidad Complutense (UCM).
	Departamento de Genética. Departamento de Microbiología. Facultad de Ciencias Biológicas. Universidad Complutense (UCM).
	Instituto Ramón y Cajal de Investigación Sanitaria (IRYCIS). Universidad Complutense (UCM). Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (UAM). Universidad de Alcalá (UAH). Salud Madrid. Comunidad de Madrid.
	Centro de Vigilancia Sanitaria Veterinaria (VISAVET). Universidad Complutense (UCM).
	Departamento de Sanidad Animal. Facultad de Veterinaria. Universidad Complutense (UCM).
	Centro de Investigaciones Biológicas (CIB). Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC).
	Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria (INTA).

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