Microbiomes are essential for human, animal, plant, and ecosystem health.

Despite widespread recognition of the importance of microbiomes, there is little attention to monitoring and safeguarding microbial ecologies on policy levels. Evidence is accumulating that microbiomes are deteriorating owing to practices at societal levels, such as pesticide use in agriculture, air and water pollution, and overuse of antibiotics. Potential policy on these issues would cross multiple policy domains, such as public health, environment, agriculture and more. What is needed is a concept that can act as a foundation for safeguarding microbial ecologies for healthy people, animals, and environments across diverse policy domains.

In this presentation Dr. O’Doherty introduces the notion of microbiome stewardship to serve in this capacity. He examines challenges to be addressed and steps to take toward developing meaningful microbiome stewardship.