Baby Buddy app is more than a pregnancy guide. It is a health and wellbeing intervention dedicated to empowering families to break their intergenerational cycles of inequality, and to assist front health professionals with communication and continuity of care while supporting these families.

The tone, style, content and interactive functionality are designed to help:

• Build knowledge and confidence
• Improve health and emotional literacy

Assessing the impact of the Baby Buddy app intervention relies on user feedback and data showing improvements across several key indicators such as breastfeeding rates and baby bonding (two examples of determinants that support better outcomes).

More vulnerable children are not only at risk of poor outcomes in the long term. They are at greater risk of poor health and stillbirth in the shorter term.

The value of Baby Buddy as an intervention has been identified by the Centre for Research Excellence in Australia. We were invited to attend and address a conference on the Safer Baby Bundle initiative to improve Mothers’ and Baby’s Health, funded by the federal government. This is the start of a project to adapt and integrate an Australian version of Baby Buddy across the country: using the UK model of professional Embedding, and grassroots community outreach and leadership.

Alison Baum OBE, CEO Best Beginnings had the great privilege of meeting inspirational representatives from Aboriginal communities and led a workshop with more than 200 participants to gauge the suitability and relevance of Baby Buddy’s content.

UNICEF funded a further 2-hour session to gather insights from more than 30 countries.

Reflection shared on Twitter at the time: