How fast a year passes that we are once Antibiotic Awareness Week has come and gone. This global week of education on Antibiotic Use, Antibiotic Resistance and Antibiotic Development helps promote the goal of protecting this valuable resource. We, within the Penn State Schuylkill Small Worlds and Tiny Earth Program, are joining with groups from around the world to bring the discussion of antibiotics to our community.
Even our Antibiotic Development Research partners at the Small World Initiative and Tiny Earth Program have been celebrating ways for young people to pass on their knowledge to the general public. This year the Tiny Earth Program found and Wisconsin Institute of Discovery Director, Jo Handelsman, came out with a book on the importance of soil, which was just released this December, and highlights how many of our most important antibiotics have come from soil, but unfortuantely this resource has been injured and depleted in many places.
As part of our efforts to spread Antibiotic Awareness at PS Schuylkill, we with Schuylkill Sustainability set up a table with information about antibiotic awareness in the Student Center on campus and talked to passerbys in the days before Fall break. For this inaugural event, we had visitiors stop and learn more. We also posted signs in restrooms reminding people about antibiotic usage. Part of our continued goal is to remind people that antibiotics are a precious resource that need to be utilized in the right ways and that it is possible to find new antibiotics from natural resources.
Happy Antibiotic Awareness Week and Happy Holidays!