Environmental antimicrobial resistance (AMR) surveillance has expanded substantially across aquatic systems, wildlife, and other ecological compartments. While these efforts have improved our understanding of resistant bacteria and resistance determinants, translating surveillance outputs into meaningful interpretation, risk assessment, and operational decision-making remains challenging. We argue that the next challenge for environmental AMR surveillance is to develop purpose-driven and context-aware frameworks that align surveillance objectives, environmental context, and methodological design and enable interpretation and action across One Health systems.
Heiden et al. (Mon,) studied this question.