This week we had the pleasure of hearing from Professor Bev Lawton Founder and Director of Te Tatai Hauora O Hine The Centre for Womens Health Research at Victoria University.  

Bev’s vision is “The elimination of preventable harm and death for women and children”.  The motivation is to prevent the deaths of babies and mothers.  This will require changes in clinical practice, systems and policy.   It is evident that we are good at preventing death in child birth that is resuscitations but work needs to be done on recognising high risk cases to prevent any deaths or near misses.  

Bev’s research has found 34% of deaths were preventable due to a failure to recognise high risk. One of the achievement goals is to half the number of babies and mothers from suffering an avoidable death or harm.  Another goal is to eliminate cervical cancer and disparities by promoting self testing for cervical cancer. This is expected to help those unable to get to the doctor or in fact pay for a doctor to provide a smear test. This project is being trialed in Northland where women are under screened. In addition an immunisation for HPV has been administered to children across NZ in order to try and prevent the spread of the virus that causes 99% of cervical cancer cases.  The goal is to have immunisation take up higher and for self testing for all women.  The expectation is that if we help the disadvantaged first we will help all.  With this in mind two other projects Whanau Manaaki and Whanau Wrap have been implemented to look after the whole family and Iwi which will in turn help mothers and babies to have better health results. 

Bev didn’t have time to answer the many questions and there was much encouragement for her work.  

Bev is also a member of the club walking group along with husband Steve so I am sure we will be able to keep up on results from Bev’s research.  Thank you Bev for sharing your fabulous work with us.

Anne Hare

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