Women's health across the reproductive years

CRE HiPP

Directed by Professor Helen Skouteris, HSCU leads the Centre of Research Excellence in Health in Preconception and Pregnancy (CRE HiPP), funded from 2020-2025.

CRE HiPP aims to create evidence-based knowledge and support for women before and during pregnancy, to improve the health of women and the next generation by:

  1. Generating new knowledge across preconception and pregnancy in relation to diet and physical activity behaviours across the research pipeline from co-design to economic evaluation;
  2. Translating new knowledge into policy and practice;
  3. Developing a multidisciplinary research workforce; and
  4. Leveraging extensive existing collaborations.

Using a systems approach, CRE HiPP reaches women through workplaces, community health, fertility services, maternity services, and primary care. We have a specific aim to develop culturally appropriate adaptations to our work.

For more information on CRE HiPP, please visit our website: hipp.org.au

HiPPP Portal

An example of our work in CRE HiPP includes the Health in Preconception, Pregnancy, and Postpartum Workplace Portal (HiPPP Portal), led by Dr Briony Hill, along with Professor Helen Skouteris, Ms Seonad Madden, Dr Claire Blewitt, and Dr Mandy O’Connor.

The HiPPP Portal has been co-developed at MacKillop Family Services and is also being co-developed at the University of Tasmania, in collaboration with Professor Andrew Hills and Dr Kiran Ahuja.

The HiPPP Workplace Portal provides a “one stop shop” for people and families to source evidence-based information about health, wellbeing and maternity/parental leave policies and practices during these reproductive life phases and is tailored to each workplace to suit the needs of their employees.

HiPPP Portal

Watch the HiPPP Portal launch by MacKillop Family Services CEO Robyn Miller to learn more about this initiative.

We have developed an Implementation Guide that can be used by other organisations to develop and implement a HiPPP Portal.

Our publications relating to the HiPPP Portal include:

In addition to CRE HiPP, funding for this project was provided by the Australian Government’s Medical Research Future Fund (MRFF) Boosting Preventive Health Research Program, administered through The Australian Prevention Partnership Centre (TAPPC).

A socio-ecological approach to weight stigma in preconception, pregnancy, and postpartum

This ARC Discovery Project (2022-2025) is led by Dr Briony Hill (CIA) and Professor Helen Skouteris (CIB) in HSCU in collaboration with Professor Lucie Rychetnik (University of Sydney), Professor Matthew Fuller-Tyszkiewicz (Deakin University), Associate Professor Jacqueline Boyle (Eastern Health Clinical School), Dr Angela Incollingo Rodriguez (Worcester Polytechnic University, USA), Dr Divya Ramachandran (Monash University) and Jane Martin (Cancer Council Victoria).

The overall aim of this project is to develop guidance for the translation of weight stigma evidence into preconception, pregnancy, and postpartum obesity-related policy. It focuses on the socio-ecological factors that perpetuate weight stigma in women across the reproductive life phase, that is, in women planning a pregnancy, in women who are pregnant and in mothers who have given birth within a 24-month period.

PhD students Haimanot Hailu and Michelle Dever are completing core elements of this program of work focusing on societal perspectives and women’s perspectives, respectively (see step 1 in infographic, above).

Key publications that informed the development of this research include:

Reframing understanding of preconception lifestyle health: A socioecological approach

This project is funded by an ARC Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA; 2023-2025), awarded to Dr Briony Hill.

The aim of this project is to reframe our understanding of preconception lifestyle health in women. From the current narrative of blaming women for their health to one that implicates broader societal perspectives to support women to optimise their diet and physical behaviours before pregnancy.

This project will generate new knowledge and conceptual and theoretical understanding that will enable women and those in the ecological environment, to be empowered to eliminate weight stigma in the preconception period.

This project draws upon a strong program of existing research in the preconception field, including CRE HiPP (described above), an NHMRC Early Career Fellowship completed by Dr Hill, and the ARC Discovery Project on weight stigma (described above; see Figure).

PhD student, Chloe Tran is working within this project to transcend individual blame and weight stigma in the preconception period by focusing on the healthcare setting.

Key publications relating to this research include:

Body image and disordered eating during reproductive years

Pregnancy and postpartum present unique opportunities that increase women’s risk of developing body dissatisfaction and disordered eating. They are also important perinatal screening priorities as they may be experienced by women of any body weight or size, yet are typically excluded from gestational weight and health behaviour intervention research and care.

The body image and disordered eating during reproductive years project highlights the often-overlooked role that body image and its associated psychosocial factors can play in steering women’s health outcomes during pregnancy and postpartum.

It also investigates factors involved in the development, relapse or maintenance of disordered eating behaviours during reproductive years, with the aim of advancing evidence that will better support clinicians and women to navigate the complex psychological, emotional and physiological factors involved in enhancing birthing outcomes for mothers and their babies.

Led by Dr Heidi Bergmeier and Professor Helen Skouteris, the project builds on seminal research in the field, including conceptual models of body dissatisfaction and other psychosocial factors of excessive gestational weight gain, exclusive breastfeeding, postpartum weight retention, and the development of the Pregnancy Figure Rating Scale (PRFS) – a measure of discrepancies between current and ideal shape during pregnancy, that is now used by researchers internationally – and the Body Image in Pregnancy Scale (BIPS-G) – translated and validated for use in Germany.

Key publications relating to this project include: