New public health campaign to improve pregnancy outcomes

The Menzies School of Health Research and Australian Preterm Birth Prevention Alliance have launched a new public health campaign to improve pregnancy outcomes for First Nations mothers and their babies across the country.

The Preterm Birth Prevention campaign ‘See, Stop, Scan’, launched at the 2024 Australian College of Midwives NT Conference, aims to educate and empower First Nations mothers by promoting engagement between healthcare providers and pregnant Top End women.

First Nations women in the Northern Territory are said to experience some of the highest rates of preterm birth in the world — currently double that of non-Indigenous populations. Preterm birth is birth before 37 weeks of pregnancy, and remains the single greatest cause of childhood death and disability in Australia.

Menzies Senior Research Fellow and Top End Alliance Lead Dr Kiarna Brown said, “Despite significant successes in reducing the rates of preterm birth in a number of our states and territories, Aboriginal mothers still remain disproportionately affected by preterm birth — with rates twice that of the non-Aboriginal mothers in many jurisdictions.”

Brown pointed to complex interactions between maternal and perinatal health outcomes and the determinants of health as key factors influencing the poorer health outcomes that First Nations mothers and babies continue to experience.

Many women from across the Top End have mentioned that existing public pregnancy education is often unrelatable and inaccessible due to language and cultural barriers, Brown said.

“Many reported having very limited knowledge about preterm birth and strategies for its prevention,” she said.

“The ‘See, Stop, Scan’ campaign has been informed by the Alliance’s key strategies to prevent early birth and will hero the role Aboriginal mothers and their healthcare workers can play in ensuring the healthiest pregnancies for themselves and their babies and building strong communities.

“Women want to know more about how to grow strong and healthy babies. By enabling this, we will have the opportunity to positively impact the health of future generations.”

The Chair of the Australian Preterm Birth Prevention Alliance, Professor John Newnham, applauded the work of Brown and her team at Menzies in leading this important work.

“The challenge has always been to ensure all pregnant women, no matter where they live or which hospital they attend, are assessed for risk of preterm birth and are offered appropriate care to minimise that risk,” Newnham said.

“The hope is that the Top End ‘See, Stop, Scan’ campaign will provide a roadmap for improved outcomes for all First Nations women and their children across the country.”

The campaign features posters, DL flyers and information sheets for antenatal clinics and GP clinics, offering the following advice:

• See: See your midwife early to make sure both you and baby stay strong and healthy.
• Stop: Smoking can cause harm to your baby, increasing the risk of being born too early or not growing properly.
• Scan: Have a scan of your baby in the second trimester to provide very important information about you and your baby.
   

The campaign is a result of the work the Alliance completed throughout the Every Week Counts National Preterm Birth Prevention Collaborative — a recently completed three-year Commonwealth-funded program that has been working to reduce early births and preterm births before week 37.

Image credit: iStock.com/JohnnyGreig