Our Story

Who we are

• The Australian Preterm Birth Prevention Alliance is a sub-committee of the Perinatal Society of Australia and New Zealand (PSANZ), and sits side-by-side with the other sub-committees.
• There is an Executive Committee consisting of the three lead Chief Investigators of the NHMRC Partnership Grant awarded April 2018 (APP1151853) and three early career clinicians.
• There is a Steering Committee consisting of the ten Chief Investigators of the NHMRC Partnership Grant (APP1151853); two members from each jurisdiction (of whom one or both may already be members through their role as one of the ten Chief Investigators); special members as required of Working Groups; a midwife; a consumer representative; a marketing and media person; and a person with fund-raising expertise.
• The Steering and Executive Committees have a Chairperson and an Alliance Manager.

Our story

In 2014, a statewide program was introduced to safely lower the rate of preterm birth across the whole population in Western Australia (WA).

In the first full calendar year, the rate of preterm birth across the state fell by 7.6% and the reductions extended to the earlier gestational ages.

With funding provided by a NHMRC Partnership grant, the program was then rolled-out nationally in June 2018 through the establishment of the Australian Preterm Birth Prevention Alliance (the Alliance). The Alliance and its activities are the world’s first national preterm birth prevention program.

The seven strategies included in the program were chosen for the high evidential basis of their effectiveness and suitability for the Australian healthcare environment.

In summary, they include: avoidance of birth before 39 weeks completed weeks of gestation unless there is medical or obstetric justification; measurement of the length of the cervix at all mid-pregnancy morphology ultrasound scans; prescription of vaginal progesterone pessaries for any case of shortened cervix or for past history of spontaneous preterm birth; ongoing monitoring of the length of the cervix if shown to be shortened; smoking cessation programs; and promotion of continuity of care by a known healthcare provider.

The success seen in WA was soon replicated in the ACT and Tasmania, but not in the larger population states of NSW, Victoria and Queensland.

It was clear the strategies together can be successful, but a more effective method of implementation was required to achieve and sustain reductions in preterm birth. The method chosen was the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) Breakthrough Series Collaborative model.

Appropriate financial support was provided by the Commonwealth Government in the May 2021 Budget.

The IHI Breakthrough Series Collaborative model aims to produce rapid and enduring improvements in clinical practice across healthcare facilities.

To enable this large national project, the Alliance partnered with Women’s Healthcare Australasia (WHA). WHA is a not-for-profit organisation based in Canberra that includes 160 maternity services from across Australia.

Each service provides clinical data that are then returned to the participating centres in a format that allows teams to see the effect of their improvement efforts over time on outcomes for women and their babies, as well as benchmarking of their service when compared with others.

The availability of such effective and timely data systems made WHA the perfect partner, providing a rich source of information to monitor the program and continuously feed each hospital with their own outcomes along with those of their peers.

The first round of the Program concluded in March 2024 and represented 54% of Australia’s annual public births. Final outcome data is set to be published in late 2025.

In March 2025, the Federal Government announced new funding to expand Australia’s world-first national program to safely reduce rates of preterm and early term birth with a focus on improving pregnancy outcomes for First Nations mothers.

The new round of funding will allow the Every Week Counts Program to hold the gains from Round One of the National Program and to expand into more hospitals and other regions to make sure that all Australian women who are having babies can benefit from this program.

Find out more about the Australian Preterm and Early Term Birth Prevetion Program here.