The Australian Living Evidence Consortium (ALEC), the Australian College of Midwives (ACM) and the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RANZCOG) are pleased to announce they have been awarded a tender by the Australian Department of Health to develop National Living Guidelines for Pregnancy and Postnatal Care.
Professor Caroline Homer, who was the co-chair of the previous Pregnancy Care guidelines group, said ’It is just fantastic that the Commonwealth Government have funded this important work. National guidelines are essential to ensure every mother and baby in Australia gets the best care. This funding enables us to update the pregnancy care guidelines continuing the process of providing high quality evidence-based guidance to maternity service providers and the consumers of their care, and, for the first time, develop national postnatal care guidelines. It is so good to have ALEC leading this in partnership with ACM and RANZCOG with the support of many relevant organisations and consumer groups’.
The RANZCOG President Dr Benjamin Bopp said ‘RANZCOG are delighted to partner with ALEC and ACM in leading an update to the pregnancy care guidelines and providing the College’s expertise. This will continue the process of providing high quality evidence-based guidance to maternity service providers and the consumers of their care’.
This will encompass two critical pieces of work;
- updating the Pregnancy Care Guidelines to reflect current evidence and best practice in
maternity care, transforming them into Living Guidelines kept-continually up-to-date for thenext 5 years; and
- developing new National Living Guidelines for the provision of Postnatal Care
The Clinical Practice Guidelines for Pregnancy Care were first released in 2008 and since that time have had a signification impact on maternity health services and helping to ensure that women in Australia are provided with consistent, high-quality, evidence-based maternity care. The development of the new Living Guidelines will utilise a continuous evidence surveillance and rapid response model to incorporate new relevant evidence into the guidelines as soon as it becomes available. Both projects will be developed and approved in accordance with the National Health and Medical Research Council’s (NHMRC) Standards for Guidelines.
We are delighted that the following organisations have agreed participate in the development of these two sets of living guidelines resulting in a truly collaborative project:
- Allied Health Professions Australia (AHPA)
- Australasian Birth Trauma Association (ABTA)
- Australian Breastfeeding Association
- Australian College of Neonatal Nurses (ACNN)
- Australian College of Nursing (ACN)
- Australian College of Rural and Remote Medicine (ACRRM)
- Australian Primary Health Care Nurses Association (APNA)
- Australian Preterm Birth Prevention Alliance (APBPA)
- Centre of Perinatal Excellence (COPE)
- Centre of Research Excellence in Stillbirth (Stillbirth CRE)
- Congress of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Nurses and Midwives (CATSINaM)
- CRANAplus (peak professional body for the remote and isolated health workforce in Australia)
- Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education (FARE)
- Gidget Foundation Australia (raise awareness of Perinatal Depression and Anxiety)
- Maternal Child and Family Health Nurses Australia (MCaFHNA)
- Maternity Consumer Network (MCN)
- National Association of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Workers and Practitioners (NAATSIHWP)
- Red Nose Australia
- The Social Policy Group (SPG, formerly Migration Council Australia).
To find out more information about living evidence and to be kept up to date with information about changes to the pregnancy clinical guidelines visit https://livingevidence.org.au/