Skating Panda X CLIMAR: Outcomes and impact – building consensus through interviews and impact workshops
Posted by Emma Lamb
4 July 2025One of CLIMAR’s core objectives involves developing a communication and impact evaluation strategy that underpins and facilitates network activities. As building momentum and social change is integral to the Planetary Health Education Framework informing CLIMAR’s approach towards understanding the intersections between antimicrobial resistance and climate change, it’s vital for the network to spend considerable time and thought on its intended outcomes and impact.
Skating Panda, the social impact consultancy, is working with us. They interviewed a range of CLIMAR network stakeholders, who gave their thoughts on topics such as the challenges of working in antimicrobial resistance (including gaps in understanding and siloed working), the aspects of CLIMAR that most resonated with them (building a compelling argument for different audiences was mentioned), and what might obstruct the network from achieving its objectives (such as a lack of investment and funding).
The findings from these rich and wide-ranging interviews were then distilled at an Impact Workshop. This was an opportunity for CLIMAR leads to take on board Skating Panda’s findings, then work collaboratively to hone a series of desired outcomes for the network, as well as an all-important impact statement: a single sentence encapsulating CLIMAR’s mission.
The workshop covered much ground, with Skating Panda facilitating the natural processes of divergence and convergence as the leadership team explored topics and progressed towards that impact statement. There were sticking points: how CLIMAR establishes its position on the well-established One Health framework and how this sits alongside the Planetary Health framework, and how best to scope the network’s ambition, which is not merely to connect researchers, but to make a tangible, world-changing difference to the direction that both AMR and climate change are heading in during its relatively short lifetime (CLIMAR is funded until July 2028).
By asking the network leads to agree upon CLIMAR’s five key stakeholder groups, and by asking what they wanted these groups to say about CLIMAR three years from now, Skating Panda helped us use the findings from the interviews as a lens to refine and sharpen the network’s focus. With 20-20 vision on what CLIMAR’s role as a UKRI-funded research network could and should be, we were able to articulate intended outcomes; and with intended outcomes, we could finally distil hours of debate and thousands of words to that single, simple statement of what we wanted the network’s impact to be.
The outcomes and statement are still in draft form; there may be some further tinkering needed, so it does not make sense to set these in stone here just yet (watch this space though). But what came through was a commitment to advocating agency: equipping CLIMAR’s network members to think differently about these big, unwieldly issues, step outside traditional, top-down structures, and enable them to feel that they part of a vibrant, rhizomatic community, with the support, knowledge and agency to act.
If you haven’t already done so, you can join the CLIMAR network here.