Consumer Advocacy
The Australian Preterm Birth Prevention Alliance strongly believes in the power of partnering with healthcare consumers to work together to help reduce the rate of preterm birth in Australia. The below piece was written by the Lead Consumer Every Week Counts National Collaborative, Amber Bates, as part of the 2025 edition of The Every Week Counts magazine.
How women’s voices are transforming maternity care to prevent preterm birth
Bringing together a group of people from all over Australia with different views, experiences, and cultural backgrounds can be challenging. However, it is made so much easier when you all share a common vision.
For the women making up the Every Week Counts Consumer Advisory Group, that shared passion is clear: to safely lower the rate of early and preterm birth across Australia.
Embedding consumers into every aspect of the Preterm and Early Term Birth Prevention Program establishes a strong partnership where lived experience is not just valued, it is seen as essential.
The women of the Advisory Group remind us that behind every statistic is a family, a story, and a future. By weaving lived experience together with best practice, evidence-based care, we are creating maternity care that is not only scientifically sound but also compassionate, respectful, and responsive to the real needs of women and families.
The group is playing an integral role in crafting patient information and accessible resources to ensure the program has maximum impact. Reflecting on their own diverse journeys, they offer insights into what would have worked best for them, knowledge that can only come from experience.
These reflections are helping to shape how the program is delivered, ensuring it meets families where they are and supports them in a way that feels meaningful and empowering. As change champions in the community, these women are also helping to shift outdated views about pregnancy and birth.
For years, 37 weeks was seen as a suitable term delivery, but now we know better. Babies need those extra vital weeks of development, and wherever possible, we should be aiming for births at 39 weeks or later.
Through conversations at playgroups, in parenting circles, and across social networks, our Consumer Advisory Group is challenging old narratives and helping to spread new knowledge. In turn their networks become change champions too!
When lived experience and research expertise come together, real change is possible. Through this powerful partnership, we are building a future where fewer babies are born too soon, and every family has the opportunity for the healthiest start to life. The voices of women, diverse, courageous, and informed, are at the heart of this transformation, and together, we are making a lasting difference.
Amber Bates
Lead Consumer Every Week Counts National Collaborative and Co-Founder Tiny Sparks WA
Read Amber’s story in the 2025 edition of The Every Week Counts magazine here.
