Our founder, Grace Dugdale recently spoke at The Fertility Show, sharing her perspective on an area of fertility care that she believes deserves far greater attention: preconception care.

Why preconception care matters

For women and men who are trying to conceive, preconception care provides a significant opportunity to improve the health mother, father and baby. With its focus on optimising health before pregnancy, it represents the ultimate form of preventive medicine. Yet, despite a substantial body of evidence supporting its benefits, it is still not routinely integrated into clinical practice. The evidence was highlighted in The Lancet’s landmark series of papers on preconception care back in 2018 but the message hasn’t reached many women and men who are trying for a baby.

Involving both partners

In her talk, Grace explored the key factors that patients should consider when preparing for pregnancy, from optimising health and lifestyle to recognising the important role of the male partner, highlighting the need to move beyond a predominantly female-focused approach to fertility and ensuring men are included in preconception care from the outset. Lifelong health starts before conception via environmental influences on the sperm and egg and involving both partners is extremely important. This is especially true given things like risk of miscarriage are also influenced by sperm health.

Turning evidence into clinical practice

This is also an area where we are actively working to drive change. Alongside our key clinical partners, we are making important progress towards embedding effective preconception care more firmly into clinical practice.

Continuing the conversation

The show was a great opportunity to meet some of our patients, share ideas and reconnect with colleagues from across the sector. It was a valuable opportunity to continue the conversation around how better preconception care can help improve outcomes for parents and their future children.