Today marks the launch of the Royal Foundation Centre for Early Childhood by the Duchess of Cambridge.

Education has long been considered a core social determinant of health with Sustainable Development Goal 4 focusing on promoting lifelong learning opportunities for all, with a specific emphasis on better education for girls.

A new study suggests that the caesarean section rate can be lowered by reducing induction rates.

A small study from Ohio in the United States of 151 low-income caregivers of children aged 3 to 6 found that the children spent more than six hours a day in front of screens during May and June, 2020.

Children born extremely prematurely, before 32 weeks of pregnancy, continue to show cognitive limitations into their teenage years.

A study carried out at the University of Granada monitored 108 women from the first weeks of pregnancy through to delivery.

The only inpatient unit of its kind has been set up in Wales to offer multidisciplinary mental health care to women from 32 weeks of pregnancy until babies are one year old.

This retrospective cohort study used routinely collected electronic data from 2015-16 to ascertain the proportion of births recorded as having occurred in water, the characteristics of women who experienced water birth and the odds of key maternal and neonatal complications associated with giving birth in water. 46,088 women in 35 English NHS Trusts were included in the study.

The UK government has just published its Start for Life review, led by Andrea Leadsom, MP and Early Years Advisor.

The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in women being denied support from their chosen birth partners during labour.

Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) is a preventable permanent disability. A Senate committee in Australia has found that FASD is still not well understood or recognised and has highlighted a critical need for prevalence data and a robust study of its economic and social impact. 

In 2018, one in three Australian women had a caesarean section (CS). This study, from Queensland, of nearly 100,000 women who were having their first baby or a baby after a previous vaginal birth, used routinely collected hospital data to analyse the main reasons for a primary CS. The top two were: ‘abnormal fetal heart rate’ (23%) and ’primary inadequate contractions’ (23%).