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4 Headlines Protecting babies’ brains for the future Learn more about Dr Max Berry’s research into protecting babies’ brains at our upcoming event! Associate Professor Max Berry obtained her BSc in Developmental Neurobiology from the University of London prior to completion of undergraduate medical training at Guy’s and St Thomas’s Hospital, London. She obtained MRCPCH (Membership of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health) in the UK just before emigrating to New Zealand, where she completed her training in neonatal and perinatal medicine in Hamilton and Wellington. In 2008 Dr Berry was awarded an HRC (Health Research Council of New Zealand) Fellowship for PhD studies; during her PhD she examined the long-term effects of preterm birth, early nutrition, and antenatal corticosteroid exposure on cardiometabolic outcomes in sheep. Dr Berry received a project grant from the Neurological Foundation in 2018 to investigate behavioural and neurodevelopmental disorders in children and adolescents born preterm. Date: 19 November Mix and mingle: 5.30 pm Presentation: 6.30 – 7.30 pm Location: Foxglove Queens Wharf, Ballroom 33 Queens Warf, Wellington RSVP: headlines-wellington. eventbrite.co.nz Babies matter! But how do we safeguard the neurodevelopmental potential and systemic wellbeing of our smallest and most vulnerable patients? As a Neonatal Intensive Care specialist this is a question that confronts me daily – we care for some of New Zealand’s smallest and sickest patients yet the challenges, and the triumphs, of perinatal medicine are not as widely understood as we would like. Children born too early face an inequitable future with little available to families or clinicians to actively address their specific needs, and even less specifically designed to safeguard long-term wellbeing. Prematurity creates a vast and underappreciated legacy, with profound implications for the individual, their family and more widely, for society. It casts a shadow across all facets of health (including neurodevelopmental, cardiovascular, metabolic, reproductive), educational and economic wellbeing. Increasingly we are starting to understand that any reduction in gestation length has adverse implications. We’ve shown how even moderate preterm birth is linked to evidence of ADHD-type behaviours in the pre-school years, a need for increased learning support in classrooms and poorer NCEA performance in adolescence. With one in twelve Kiwi babies born preterm, we need to continue to develop innovative ways with which to optimise brain