The blueprint for a healthy life is largely determined by events which take place in the uterus before we are even born. The relationship between a mother and her baby is quite literally therefore a partnership for life.
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The Royal Women's Hospital is Australia's largest specialist maternity hospital currently caring for more than 6,500 pregnant women a year.
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The Women's also serves as a referral centre for women with pregnancy complications throughout Victoria, Tasmania and the border regions of neighbouring states.
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Although most women enjoy a trouble free pregnancy and delivery, some women may experience complications, such as miscarriage, preterm labour, high blood pressure, poor fetal growth, diabetes an difficult or prolonged labour. Unfortunately, we do not always know what causes many of these complications or how best to prevent or treat them.
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Pregnancy Research Centre
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The focus of the Pregnancy Research Centre is to better understand the causes of pregnancy disorders which compromise the health of mothers and their babies. We are extremely fortunate to be able to undertake our work in a maternity hospital of the size of the Women’s which cares for more than 7,000 pregnant women each year.
Many of these women have pregnancies troubled by complications such as miscarriage, pre-eclampsia, fetal growth restriction, gestational diabetes and preterm labour.
These common pregnancy complications create significant emotional, social and economic costs within our community. Any decline in the incidence or severity of these pregnancy complications significantly reduces these costs. The principal beneficiaries of the outcomes of the research we undertake are mothers and their babies.
Our work on human pregnancy and its disorders ranges from basic biomedical laboratory research through to clinical studies, treatment trials and public health initiatives.
Our mission is “to apply contemporary research techniques to the investigation of clinically important problems in maternal and fetal medicine and related fields, promulgate the findings of such investigations and to use such findings as the basis for evidence-based clinical practice”.
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Statement regarding the Pregnancy Research Centre’s (PRC) alignment with and contributions to Royal Women’s Hospital 2011-2015 Research Strategy…….
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PRC research activities focus on common and important clinical conditions (e.g. pre-eclampsia, fetal growth restriction, placental dysfunction, maternal and fetal welfare, labour dysfunction) of human pregnancy, with a view to improving the health of mothers and babies impacted upon by these conditions
PRC research activities involve an extensive range of collaborators, both intramural (clinical and scientific staff of the Royal Women’s Hospital) and extramural (local, national and international colleagues)
PRC staff vigorously pursue funding opportunities (as evidenced the receipt of over $14 million of extramural funding support since the PRC opened in 1993)
PRC research activities are innovative both in terms of hypotheses under examination and methodologies used, which is a quality that has facilitated the PRC’s successful grant funding and publication track record
PRC staff comprehensively disseminate gained knowledge (e.g. over 500 publications produced since the PRC opened in 1993)
PRC staff engage broadly with research partners and share research opportunities (e.g. active and extensive contribution to equipment purchases and methodology developments now available within the Royal Women’s Hospital level 7 Research Precinct)
The PRC functions ethically and responsibly (e.g. all research projects carried out are approved by the Royal Women’s Hospital Research and Ethics committees)
The PRC delivers good financial stewardship (e.g. it has always maintained a balanced annual operating account research budget
The PRC evaluates its performance on a regular basis (e.g. ensuring it meets long term key performance indicators such as producing an average of at least a publication per fortnight, and generating an extra dollar of extramural funding support for each dollar it receives of intramural funding support
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