Research

PPA aims to provide quality, impartial and evidence based information and support services for all new Australian parents, which optimise their experience of the transition into parenting and their child's early development. We aim to give every Australian parent the opportunity to make informed choices about what is best for them and their family. We also support parents to take responsibility for the choices they make in the promotion of their own and their family’s well-being.

PPA services are parent-centred that is, based upon the needs of the parents we serve. Our services aim to be non-judgmental and based upon up-to-date, high quality scientific evidence.

PPA informs and supports Australian parents through its extensive website, the PPA Mobile Application and its antenatal and postnatal classes and parenting courses. Our services are aligned with the UK's Government's Preparing for Birth and Beyond Program which provides a structured curriculum, but is responsive to the needs of the adult learners in each group. We use a strengths based approach to facilitate parents to identify pre-existing skills and knowledge and build upon these resources and capacities to meet their own needs and those of their child.

We use the following resources in developing both our online and class based information and resources for parents:

The Department of Health's Clinical Practice Guidelines - Antenatal Care Module 1 and Module 2. The guidelines were developed as part of the National Maternity Services Plan and are designed to support Australian maternity services to provide high-quality, evidence-based antenatal care to healthy pregnant women.

The Cochrane Collaboration is an international organisation which undertakes regular reviews of the best available evidence, including studies relating to maternal and newborn care.  We regularly refer to Cochrane Systematic Reviews as they provide better quality evidence.

PubMed is a free service of the U.S. National Library of Medicine. Many individual studies are accessible from this portal.

National Institute of Clinical Excellence (UK) provides regularly updated clinical guidelines on Antenatal Care and Intrapartum Care. We refer to these guidelines where they align with findings from Cochrane Systematic Reviews.

PPA’s Position Statement on Labour and Birth can be downloaded free of charge here.

PPA’s research based information is under the following sections:

• Pregnancy
• Birth
• Parenting

If you are a researcher interested in using PPA members or PPA material for your research project, please email us for further information.