Access to trustworthy and up-to-date information is essential not only to individual decision making, but to strengthening the voice of consumers. Childbirth Australia encourages and supports networking and sharing knowledge about high-quality, appropriately evidence-based care.

Since the late 1990s, many professionals and policy-makers in health care have emphasised how crucial high-quality research evidence is to driving change. Known sometimes as knowledge ‘transfer or translation’, knowledge dissemination involves a dynamic process of sharing information to make health services and products more effective. Knowledge Dissemination involves researchers who make ‘knowledge’ through their investigations sharing findings with knowledge users, whether policy-makers, clinicians or health consumers.

Childbirth Australia offers a location through which a range of interested people can access opinions, research evidence and follow contemporary debates about maternity care.

As Childbirth Australia develops as an organisation we aim to:

• undertake research and evaluation and develop policy positions to inform healthcare planners and decision makers; and
• be a source of evidence-based, and user-friendly information for women and families, service providers and policy makers, produced in consultation and collaboration with other interested groups and organisations.