Maternity - Community and Acute. Funding for Baby Health Eco Dolls

The trustwide maternity department is part of the Maternity and Neonatal Safety Collaborative wave 2. This collaboration is to improve outcomes and reduce unwarranted variation by providing a safe, high quality healthcare experience for all women, babies and families across maternity care settings in England.

The ultimate aim is to reduce the rate of stillbirths, neonatal death and brain injuries occurring during or soon after birth by 20% by 2020. We have chosen to focus on improving the proportion of smoke free pregnancies by 20% at birth by April 2019.

To help undertake aspects of this work the department applied to Bright Community for funding to purchase baby health edco dolls and placenta models which clearly demonstrates the affects smoking during pregnancy has on the placenta. The dolls have been shared across the trust to aid smoking cessation discussions.

The latest regional data has been released and we have the lowest smoking at delivery rates across the region in both North Tyneside 8.7% and Northumbria 10% . The department continues to work hard with this to achieve the national recommendation of 6% by 2022.

Well done to the maternity team and thank you to Bright Community for providing the funds.