The WHO Southeast Asia and Western Pacific regions, home to more than half of the world's population, bear a disproportionate burden of antimicrobial resistance (AMR), including some of the most severe resistance patterns. The convergence of rapidly growing economies and persistent health system challenges in these regions creates a critical platform for understanding the dynamics of AMR and developing scalable governance approaches relevant to other low- and middle-income countries. This Viewpoint reviews current progress in AMR governance globally and study regions, with a focus on country-specific National Action Plans, and highlights the discrepancies between policy intentions and actual implementation. Implementation science, developed to address research-to-practice gaps, provides a systematic framework for identifying and overcoming barriers to implementation, thereby translating political commitments into actionable interventions. Given the cross-sectoral complexity of AMR, we propose novel strategic priorities to enhance AMR governance by embedding implementation science within the One Health approach. This involves a four-step process: selecting and adapting evidence-based practices, assessing multilevel barriers and enablers, selecting, using and adapting implementation strategies, and evaluating and sustaining their impact. Together, this framework provides a blueprint for localising and operationalising overarching policy concepts into concrete, context-specific actions, with potential lessons for other regions globally.