Video

Science for communities with ESR

This is an edited recording of the webinar Science for communities with ESR. Krisitin Dyet, microbiologist with ESR, discusses her role and the importance of AMR awareness.

Transcript

Welcome, about the Science Learning Hub and introducing Dr Kristin Dyet

Greta Dromgool

Alright, let's get started. Kia ora koutou welcome to our session today, Science for Communities.

We are looking at New Zealand Institute of Environmental Science and Research, and I'd really like to welcome, Kristen today, kia ora and welcome. Lovely to have you along. We are going to be having a chat about the science that you do and the science that happens at ESR and also about this thing called antimicrobial resistance.

So kia ora and welcome. We are the Science Learning Hub and are a website to help teachers teaching science. And so we are lucky enough to connect with experts, like Kristen here, and have discussions around science that's happening in Aotearoa New Zealand and how you might bring that into your classroom.

I'd just really like to introduce you and find out a little bit about you and your background and the role that you have currently. So, kia ora, I'll hand over to you to tell us about yourself.

Kristin Dyet

Kia ora, thanks Greta and thanks for the invitation to come in and talk to this group today. It's really interesting and it's interesting to hear about what teachers actually need in this space.

My name is Kristin Dyet and I joined ESR back in 2006, which seems like a long time ago now, and I'm based in the Health Environment Group at Kenepuru Science Centre in Wellington and I manage the Antimicrobial Reference Lab there. Which is, I guess, why you've asked me to come along and talk today because it's antimicrobial awareness week coming up and it's a good time to talk about AMR.

Becoming a microbiologist (video timecode 1:42)

Greta Dromgool

Oh, did you always know you wanted to be a microbiologist or when did you kind of get interested in, in microbiology?

Kristin Dyet

I had some wonderful science teachers at school. I think I knew I wanted to do science. I wasn't quite sure what type of science I wanted to do. I had a fantastic biology teacher and that I really enjoyed that and I think I was interested in the, on the, human health, the helping people side of things, and that's where I saw myself going. So I went down to Otago and I did BSc Hons down there and loved it and ended up going through and doing a PhD. As part of that process, I found out about the CDC, over in the United States, and sort of New Zealand's equivalent, I sort of saw as ESR, because ESR is the National Reference Laboratory akin to the CDC in the States. And so I wanted to find out a little bit more about ESR and, and what their microbiology group did. And so I, I mean I guess I was lucky in one sense that you find something that you're interested in and it sort of does work out.

Greta Dromgool

Thank you. I, so often, when we talk to scientists then there are behind that journey science teachers that have made a positive impact, so it's lovely to hear that you had that experience as well. And I think from, from some of the work that we're doing today, hopefully the students get to hear about the microbiology of the possibility of an area that they might not have thought about.

Kristin Dyet

Yeah, and I mean, I think in high school, you know, you, you're not really aware of all the different careers that are out there. You know, you talk to as many people as you can, but you know, there's still a lot of careers that probably I wasn't aware of and hadn't even thought about back in the day. So yeah, time times are changing as well, there's now new roles that probably weren't available when I was first starting to think about a career as well.

Greta Dromgool

Absolutely, yes. And I think though just, given what we're seeing with antimicrobial resistance and pandemics and things like that, there's going to be a need for people that understand microbes and how they work.

World Antimicrobial Awareness Week (video timecode 3.51)

Greta Dromgool

The kind of inspiration behind our session today is the upcoming World Antimicrobial Awareness Week and I wanted to start by asking you about this week and really why we might need a week of awareness.

Now we got the slide here, I wondered if you could tell us a bit about it.

Kristin Dyet

Yeah, sure. So the World Antimicrobial Awareness Week has been going for a few years now, and each year they generally have a theme. And I guess it's generally just to promote, sort of coverage about the cause, I guess in some ways.

So the theme this year is preventing antimicrobial resistance together. So it's not just one person or one organisation trying to do it, it's our whole community that needs to get behind this. On the right-hand side here, we've got a poster that a number of New Zealand agencies have got behind. So this is sort of what our healthcare professionals are largely going to be looking at and just making them aware of what's going on. And I guess the broader theme is more about resistance being a threat to humans, animals and plants. It affects everybody and it affects multiple different parts of the human sector as well. So really looking at that, we call it a One Health approach.

Greta Dromgool

And I think that concept of everybody working together is going to be really important for this really challenging issue and the idea of education having a role to play in that I think is really important.

Kristin Dyet

Yeah. And we certainly all do have a role to play, even just as simple as going to your doctor and not always expecting antimicrobial agents. If you've got a viral infection, it's not going to work and I think Siouxsie covered that in her presentation a few weeks ago. And I think there is a lot more general awareness of that through things such as the World Antimicrobial Awareness Week and the issues that we face around antimicrobial resistance.

We do need to use our antimicrobial agents a little bit more effectively.

Greta Dromgool

Absolutely. Thank you.

Pathways of AMR transmission (video timecode 5.51)

Greta Dromgool

This image here comes from one of the articles that you're part of, and I wondered if you could tell us a little bit about what's happening in this diagram.

Kristin Dyet

Yeah, so this is an image just looking at our environment, looking at the humans, the animals, and the environmental sectors within that and how the bacteria in our environment actually move between these different areas.

Most bacteria aren't actually bad, not all will cause us to become sick, but of course those pathogens that do make us sick, do also move through these same routes between the environment, the humans and the animals. And so when we're talking about doing things together, we can't just look at the human population, or the animal population, or the environment. We've got to look at everything altogether and we've all got to be working sort of on the same page.

Greta Dromgool

Thank you. I think that, yeah, the idea of that connectivity between different systems is so important.

Kristin Dyet

We also need to think of, you know, the entire world as a population as well. Bugs can easily come into the country on a plane, as we learned through COVID. I think a lot of people in the New Zealand public became aware of just how bugs actually do move around the world. So just because New Zealand's got a really strong stance on this, we actually need to support other nations and be aware of what's happening overseas because all of these threats are potentially just a plane ride away.

Greta Dromgool

Absolutely, yes. What's happening in another country, you know, can ultimately have a massive impact on us as well.

Kristin Dyet

Absolutely. Yeah.

ESR Institute of Environmental Science & Research (video timecode 7.27)

Greta Dromgool

So the next thing I'd like to ask you about, pardon me, I'd like you to tell me a little bit about ESR and what it is, because I think a lot of educators might have heard the acronyms but not necessarily know what it's all about.

Kristin Dyet

Yeah, and I think that's actually really common when you, when I'm speaking to friends and family, you know, they may or may not have heard of ESR and I think the COVID pandemic actually put ESR in the spotlight a little bit. And the other way people may have heard about ESR is actually through the forensic work, work we do through the New Zealand police.

ESR is a Crown Research Institute and we've got a really diverse group of people working in, in science, and of course all the support areas as well. And I think I like to think of ESR as an agency that is really about helping, helping our community. A lot of people that work at ESR are really about public good. We really like to help people, and so that's where our sort of public health side, the forensic side, and also our food and water groups, we're all looking at encouraging our communities to do things in better ways.

Resources for the classroom (video timecode 8:35)

Greta Dromgool 

In this next section, I'm really keen to ask you about the resources that are available on the ESR website that could be useful for teachers to bring into their classroom.

Kristin Dyet

Well, so I'm largely going to talk in the public health area in this, because this is the area that I work in. But a lot of our publications, well all of our publications really, are put on the Ngā Kete Intelligence Hub, which is, can be, accessed through our website.

So we have a lot of reports on various bacteria looking at, at trends over time. A lot of them are very paper-based and you know, quite a lot of reading involved. However, we are moving more and more to dashboard-type sort of situations. And I think some of those will be really interesting for students – a little bit more interactive where they can actually filter things to look at what's happening in their region and compare that to what's happening to all of New Zealand.

So I guess just to be aware that there's a wealth of information there and have a look to see if there's anything of use, but also don't be afraid to reach out to us. We’re happy for people to reach out to me, but we also have a general inquiries email address that people can get in touch. So if you can't find what you're looking for, and you think there might be something there, or even if you're not sure, just get in touch and we may or may not be able to help or point you in the direction of where somebody else may be able to help.

Greta Dromgool

That's great. Yeah, you're right, there is a huge amount on here, and some won't necessarily be useful directly in the classroom, but there is a lot that would be. I did wonder if you could just speak briefly about what's there in regards to AMR.

Kristin Dyet

So in terms of AMR, what my lab largely looks at is a lot of emerging infections. So it's, it's sort of a lot of it's really like COVID, a lot of it's coming over the border. And so we keep on looking at those incursions coming over the border, and we really count the number of those that are happening, and we are looking at a wide range of different bugs and you can go into each of those reports and have a look and see what, see what's going on, see how the numbers are changing, see how the types are changing over time.

Greta Dromgool

And yeah, great opportunity to get students accessing real data that is from Aotearoa and that they can practise those skills for interpreting representations or creating their own based on the data that you've got.

Wastewater Surveillance Dashboard (video timecode 10:53)

Greta Dromgool

I also wanted to talk to the Wastewater Surveillance Dashboard because this is a really, really accessible tool that has been created sharing ESR wastewater science. And I wanted to just highlight that it's there and get a little bit of insight from you as to what it's sharing, what it's showing us.

Kristin Dyet

Yeah, so this Wastewater Surveillance dashboard is recently new. It was developed during the COVID pandemic and wastewaters surveillance is really looking at what is in our wastewater. So things that we're basically discarding and using that information to actually try to inform what's going on in terms of infectious diseases. So we started off looking at COVID and as I say this, this website is now up and going. We are starting to look at different infectious agents as well, the different bacteria and some viruses and there was a chance that we could potentially use this for AMR as well to get an indication of the amount of AMR that's in a particular community. For example, rest homes is a really vulnerable population, you know, what's actually going on in that space rather than having to go and swab everybody, which is quite time consuming.

Kristin’s work with ESR (video timecode 12:08)

Greta Dromgool

So, yeah. I wonder if you could tell us the bit about the work that you do.

Kristin Dyet

So I lead the Antimicrobial Reference Lab at ESR and as part of that we are tasked with undertaking surveillance of antimicrobial resistance and human pathogens on behalf of the Ministry of Health.

I've got a whole lot of newspaper articles here because I think this is the side that a lot of the general public often sort of see and there's these, you know, superbug terms and it all can sound a little bit scary, but this is the sort of stuff that my lab gets into.

We are looking at the number of these bugs that are found in New Zealand, how it's changing over time, and I guess what interventions we actually need to actually change things.

There's an article there about superbug found in chicken. There were actually things that were brought in to change the way that chicken was processed and handled, etc. to actually try and minimise those infections. So it's those sorts of things that we're looking at.

Greta Dromgool

That must be quite satisfying when you do see changes based on the work that you're able to do in terms of increasing health population, health and wellbeing.

Kristin Dyet

Yeah, absolutely, and I think, as I said before, there's, you know, a lot of people work at ESR because they want to make a change, they want to make a difference. And I think we've also got to bear in mind that in terms of global figures, New Zealand's actually doing really well in terms of AMR. A lot of our rates are a lot lower. And so yes, there are cases and there are things that end up being in the media, but for a lot of our bugs we are seeing low levels of resistance and we want to keep it that way. So I guess, you know, some of these, you know, talking about AMR what we're actually wanting to do is protect the resource that we have, so protect those antimicrobials, let's keep them working, and let's not get in a situation, like some overseas country, where they've got a lot higher rates and it's a lot harder to manage.

Greta Dromgool

That's really important. Thank you.

Preventing AMR (video timecode 13:58)

Greta Dromgool

And, yeah, just makes me think of how important it is to try not to get sick in the first place. Yeah.

Kristin Dyet

And I think that's the a big thing, right? Infection control and prevention. You know, if you don't get an infection in the first place, then you're not going need antimicrobial agents to treat it. So things like washing hands, you know, it's really simple. I think we all learned during COVID, simple things like washing hands. There are things that we can do to minimise our chance of getting infections, you know, staying, staying fit and healthy. Vaccinations is obviously a big one as well. All those sorts of things maximise your chance of not getting an infection and reduce your need for those antimicrobial agents.

Greta Dromgool

Take, take the pressure off the need for.

Greta Dromgool

So that when we do have people, patients that desperately need it, then that's, there are some there for them.

Kristin Dyet

Absolutely, yes.

SLH links, keep in touch and thanks (video timecode 14:55)

Greta Dromgool

Right. Thank you.

It's been really lovely chatting to you today and finding out what you do and the science that goes on and just yeah, how important this is to New Zealand, but also to us personally. So thank you so much for your time.

Kristin Dyet

You're more than welcome. And, as I say, more than happy to take questions and ESR general inquiries, we're all, we're there, most of us are more than happy to help where we can.

Rights: The University of Waikato Te Whare Wananga o Waikato
Published: 22 November 2023

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