The University of Liverpool’s Harris Centre and The Cheshire and Merseyside Women’s Health and Maternity Programme hosted the UK Preterm Birth Conference 2024 in Liverpool last week.
The two-day conference saw more than 260 delegates from across the UK including clinicians, scientists and patient advocates reconnect to share new research, form new collaborations and improve preterm birth care.
Oral and poster presentations covered a wide range of current key topics. This included the University of Liverpool’s Professor Louise Kenny, who gave insight into the Children Growing up in Liverpool (C-Gull) Birth Cohort study, which aims to reduce health inequalities by collecting data from 10,000 families to provide valuable insights into how we can improve health outcomes for children. The full list of speakers is available here: https://pretermconference.com/speakers/
Conference co-presidents the University of Liverpool’s Dr Laura Goodfellow and Dr Angharad Care said: “Our aim was to make this conference both useful and enjoyable for obstetricians, gynaecologists, midwives, scientists and patient advocates who work in the field of preterm birth prediction, prevention and optimisation.
“Our stimulating programme provided updates on cutting edge research from our range of expert speakers, alongside a platform for delegates to share their research, audit and qualify improvement projects. It also looked to the future of how our community is to lessen the burden of preterm birth for women and their families.”
The UK Preterm Birth Network conference started in 2015, in Liverpool, to bring together clinicians and scientists working in preterm birth prediction and prevention. The conference has been hosted across the UK since its inception and this was the first in-person conference since the COVID-19 pandemic. The Liverpool conference highlighted the progress of preterm birth care over the past decade.
The conference team
Dr Goodfellow said: “To have so many scientists and healthcare practitioners interested in preterm birth care brings us great hope for the future of this speciality.”
Those who missed the conference may purchase a recording from the conference website. This is available from 9th February 2024 for a year.