Professor John Newnham

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Professor John Newnham - Chair of the Australian Preterm Birth Prevention Alliance, WA

Professor John Newnham

Chair of the Australian Preterm Birth Prevention Alliance, WA

State or Territory:

  • Western Australia

Primary position including institution/organisation:

  • Chair of the Australian Preterm Birth Prevention Alliance

About Professor John Newnham:

  • Recognised as one of the world’s leading authorities in the prevention of preterm birth, Prof John Newnham’s 35+ year contribution to the field of obstetrics has positively impacted and saved the lives of countless women and infants.
  • John’s enduring research interest had been to discover strategies to safely reduce the rate of preterm birth. He has published widely on this subject and is recognised as one of the world’s leading authorities. His studies have spanned the spectrum from laboratory bench through to randomised controlled trials.
  • His lifelong work has made WA one of the world’s best-known and most highly regarded centres for research and clinical excellence in pregnancy and fetal medicine.
  • He is also an Adjunct Professor at Peking University, Beijing, and Honorary Director of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at the Drum Tower Hospital, Nanjing, China.
  • Most recently, Professor John Newnham was named the 2020 WA Senior Australian of the Year in recongition of a lifetime dedicated to health and medicine.

Why does preventing early birth matter to you?

"As a medical student, I saw these babies being born and some of them were born overweight, some were underweight, some of them were overdue, some of them were preterm some of them had run out of oxygen for a while, some of them had had bleeds. I became consumed on what that meant for the rest of that child’s life. That there was this continent that we knew was there, it hadn’t been explored and I thought it must be incredibly important. I thought that the events before birth had to have a major influence on your future health and disease and off I went and never looked back."
The Australian Preterm Birth Prevention Alliance is working to safely lower the rate of early birth across Australia.
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