The Australian Preterm Birth Prevention Alliance and Women’s Healthcare Australasia have been awarded  $5.3 million in Federal Government funding to expand Australia’s world-first national program to safely reduce rates of preterm and early-term birth.

The funding will allow the Every Week Counts National Program to continue to improve the health and wellbeing of Australian women, mothers and their babies.

Professor John Newnham, from The University of Western Australia’s Medical School and Chair of the Australian Preterm Birth Prevention Alliance, said the funding would enable the program to improve pregnancy outcomes for more women across the country.

Image: Profesor John Newnham, Assistant Minister of Health Ged Kearney and Professor Jonathan Morris.

“It has been inspiring to see the amazing work being done by the hospital teams participating in the first phase of the national program,” Professor Newnham said.

“These teams have generously shared ideas, know-how and data with each other on how to support more women to safely continue their pregnancy to 39 weeks.

“Together they have already averted more than 4,000 untimely early births, making a big impact on the lives of those children and their families.”

The Australian Preterm Birth Prevention Alliance and Women’s Healthcare Australasia will work in partnership with pregnant women, First Nations leaders’ jurisdiction partners and maternity hospitals to strategically and safely lower the rate of untimely and harmful early birth.

Preterm birth remains the leading cause of death and disability in children worldwide under the age of five and can lead to serious health and development implications including cerebral palsy, deafness, blindness and learning and behavioural problems.

A 2020 analysis revealed the annual cost of untimely early birth to the Australian Government was $1.4 billion each year with more than $350 million spent on education assistance due to their early birth.

The first round of the program, which concluded in March 2024, involved 59 Australian maternity services that represented 54 per cent of Australia’s annual public births.

Key focus areas for the second phase include: partnering with women and families to support information decision-making; early pregnancy screening for preterm birth risk factors; safely prolonging pregnancy by reducing early term caesareans or inductions; and implementing culturally safe continuity of care models for First Nations women and babies.

Dr Barb Vernon, CEO of Women’s Healthcare Australasia, said the funding enabled best practice prevention care to be introduced into more maternity hospitals across the country.

“There’s strong interest from hospitals that missed out on the first collaborative to join this inspiring program and learn about evidence-based strategies for better detecting and responding to risk factors for early birth,” Dr Vernon said.

“Unfortunately, First Nations babies are twice as likely as non-indigenous babies to be born too early. We know we need to expand access to culturally safe and trauma-informed maternity care services, co-designed and delivered with First Nations communities and healthcare professionals if we are serious about addressing this inequity.”

To date, seven key clinical strategies, developed by the Australian Preterm Birth Prevention Alliance, have been used to safely lower the rate of preterm and early term birth.

Strategies include avoiding ending pregnancies before 39 weeks’ gestation, prescribing vaginal progesterone to women with a shortened cervix or a history of spontaneous preterm birth, promoting the importance of continuity of carer, and strongly discouraging smoking while pregnant.

Another strategy currently being considered for implementation involves screening of women at 11-14 weeks of pregnancy to predict those cases of pre-eclampsia (high blood pressure of pregnancy), which will lead to early preterm birth.