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My daughter Mallory should be here, living the life she fought so hard to stay in. Instead, I’m telling her story.

Mallory lived with cystic fibrosis (CF), but that isn’t what killed her at 25. The cause of her death was a drug-resistant bacterial infection, one that outpaced the very antibiotics designed to save her.

Her doctors had done everything right, used every tool available. And then one day in 2016, one of them looked at us and said, “The antibiotics aren’t working anymore.” He gave us a minute to absorb this news and then said, “We’re out of options.”

In the years since Mallory’s passing, the journal has become a source of solace for Shader Smith as she has traveled the globe speaking about the growing threat of antimicrobial resistance. It is also now the inspiration for two new projects she hopes will spark greater understanding of the public health crisis that ended her daughter’s life prematurely and could claim millions more.

A new project, The Global AMR Diary, launched Tuesday. The release is linked to the publication of Diary of a Dying Girl, by Mallory Smith, who died from a superbug infection in 2017. I wrote about Mallory’s story and the need to develop phage therapy to combat AMR two years ago in “Salt in My Soul: Poignant Film Calls Attention To The Need For Phages For Antibiotic Resistance.”

Diane’s global platform grew from the success of Mallory’s posthumously published bestselling memoir Salt in My Soul, the documentary of the same name, her second book Diary of a Dying Girl, and The Global AMR Diary, a storytelling initiative Diane created to aggregate the stories global health leaders have been collecting and to influence public policy. By turning personal grief into systemic advocacy, Diane is a trailblazer who has raised millions of dollars for AMR research, pioneered bold and creative awareness strategies, and positioned AMR as a profoundly human story-one that demands urgent global action

In Diary of a Dying Girl, all of us get a glimpse into Mallory’s quest to live life to the fullest, even as she was dying. The Sunday Paper sat down with Diane Shader Smith to learn more about her daughter, why she felt passionate about publishing her diary, and the advocacy work her daughter’s health battle inspired her to start doing.

A gripping, authentic window into the soul of a young person, this would be a solid addition to any collection.

AMR isn’t a sexy topic; it’s complex and hard to grasp, often going unnoticed by the general public. Many people have no idea what AMR is or how it may affect their lives. They think it only affects those with compromised health, like Mallory, who had cystic fibrosis. This is far from the truth.

Salt in My Soul, my daughter Mallory Smith’s posthumously published memoir, captivated a wide audience, from academic institutions like Harvard and Stanford to higher-profile platforms such as the White House and Capitol Hill… Mallory’s senior thesis advisor, Stanford Professor Sue McConnell, was prophetic when she called Mallory one of the best writers she’d seen in her twenty years of teaching.

Mallory Smith was a young woman who, in her own words, had “big dreams and big goals.”

When she was in high school, she set her sights on going to Stanford. After college, she hoped for a career where she could help people and “move the needle on something that’s important.” She wanted to write about the world and all its beauty. She wanted a life filled with travel and adventure. She wanted to fall in love.

In this adaptation of her memoir for adults, Smith, who died in 2017, chronicles life with cystic fibrosis from age 16 to 25. Illuminating and heartbreaking.