Improving Outcomes for Preterm Infants and their Families: A Canadian Collaborative Network

Being born too soon, or "preterm", is a life changing, stressful and emotional experience for families. Preterm babies require support for the development of all organs and any disturbances in such development or processes can have life-long consequences for the baby and their family. In Canada, every year 25,000-30,000 babies are born preterm. In order to improve outcomes of women who experience preterm labor, babies who deliver at preterm gestation and families affected by the birth of a preterm baby, we are proposing a Pan-Canadian Network, which will bring together researchers, doctors, nurses, and families from coast-to-coast to prevent and manage the consequences of preterm birth. Over the next 5 years, we aim to improve the delivery of care to extremely preterm infants during the antenatal, perinatal, and postnatal periods, and to increase the rate of survival without morbidity from 47% to 61%. The Network will work with families and parents who have undergone such experiences to understand what matters most to parents and where further research is needed. The Network will build a national database for the ongoing collection of maternal and infant characteristics related to preterm birth, so that we can understand who is at risk of preterm birth and what can be done to improve outcomes for babies born preterm. We will investigate the impact of some promising interventions via this Network and improve the transmission of knowledge of activities that can lead to better care and improvements for infants, families and societies at large.