An updated strategic plan detailing the goals of the Center for Veterinary Medicine's (CVM) National Antimicrobial Resistance Monitoring System (NARMS) aims to change the way the agency samples animals, improve its data recording and reporting methods, strengthen collaborative partnerships between national and international agencies and harmonize international reporting standards.

CVM, the US Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) veterinary regulatory oversight body, uses NARMS as a public health surveillance system to track antibiotic resistance in foodborne bacteria. The program aims to protect animal-based food sources, and is the result of a partnership between FDA, the Centers for Disease Controls and Prevention (CDC), the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS).

The 2012 update of NARMS incorporates a number of changes:

• The program hopes to improve its sampling strategies by getting a better geographic representation of samples, develop strategies to test animals for resistance before they are slaughtered and generate methods to better assess national estimates of resistance.
• NARMS hopes to optimize the way CVM acquires, analyzes and reports data obtained from a varied group of sources. As part of this goal, CVM is looking to launch an "integrated database" to pool data resources, develop a web-based program to collect data from public health sources, publish annual surveillance reports and links its database to others to establish potential trends between drug usage and antimicrobial resistance.
• Collaborative projects are central to NARMS' goals to generate more data and new testing methods, and CVM aims to develop, evaluate and apply both existing and new research tools to help gauge antimicrobial resistance. The agency is also looking to establish new partnerships with national and international bodies to leverage both intellectual and monetary resources. These partnerships include both governmental and non-governmental organizations. FDA hopes these partnerships will help it to harmonize resistance testing and reporting standards.

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FDA - FDA Announces Availability of the NARMS Strategic Plan 2012-2016

The National Antimicrobial Resistance Monitoring System (NARMS)