Helping to Reduce Preterm Birth
Miracle Babies Foundation are pleased to support the very important work of the National Preterm Birth Prevention Collaborative aimed at supporting hospitals to deliver evidence-based changes in clinical care to significantly reduce rates of preterm birth by improving health outcomes for mothers and their babies.
The Every Week Counts: National Preterm Birth Prevention Collaborative is a two-year initiative aiming to safely lower the rate of preterm and early term birth within participating maternity units from across Australia and leave an enduring culture of better practice.
The joint collaboration will use methods that have been successfully employed by hospitals around the globe for over 25 years.
Chair of the Australian Preterm Birth Prevention Alliance, Professor John Newnham AM, pointed to the Collaborative as being a truly national force aiming to strategically lower the rate of preterm birth.
“The National Collaborative aims to safely reduce preterm and early term birth across Australia by 20% through supporting hospitals in the adoption of evidence-based changes in clinical care,” Professor Newnham said.
Miracle Babies Foundation’s CEO and CoFounder, Kylie Pussell is excited to be part of the Westmead Hospital team in the collaborative.
Kylie brings her own personal experience with cervical incompetence, her journey through premature birth and the NICU, together with voices of parents across Australia keen to help and see improvements. “The screening for a short cervix being implemented is one way we can earlier identify mothers at risk of delivering their baby preterm. Having been through this trauma and years of surgeries and interventions it’s a great step forward to now offer this to expectant mother’s much earlier where risk factors are identified. This work has the potential to significantly lower preterm births and help many families avoid the trauma and heartbreak of premature birth and grief.”
Miracle Babies Foundation NurtureProgram Service Manager, Tina Parker, also with her own experience of preterm birth is a consumer representative for the Campbelltown Hospital team on the project. Tina said “It’s such a privilege to be part of this project and help reduce the number of preterm births. Families that can then hopefully go on to a full term pregnancy and be able to start their new family at home and avoid the medical and emotional time of extended hospital stays.”
WHA Chief Executive Officer, Dr Barbara Vernon, said that more than 60 hospitals across Australia are now involved in the National Collaborative.
“Australia has pockets of excellence for safely reducing early birth, however wide scale adoption across all health services has yet to occur,” Dr Vernon said.
“This model is designed to do just this and help organisations close the gap between what we know, what we do, and ultimately, prevent preterm birth and it’s far reaching impacts.”
During the Collaborative, participating hospital teams will be supported to accelerate their learning and develop reliable systems to ensure all women are offered the care and public health information that is known to reduce early birth. Teams will also be able to share their learnings with each other across Australia.
The National Preterm Birth Prevention Collaborative is being funded by the Commonwealth Government through the Women & Infants Research Foundation.
To find out more visit https://www.pretermalliance.com.au/Our-Research/Breakthrough-Collaborative
To register your interest to support the collaborative and offer your family story to help raise awareness of premature birth in Australia please.
