The Norman Beischer Medical Research Foundation is delighted to announce Dr Natasha Pritchard as the 2027–2029 NBMRF Fellow.
The Fellowship will provide $660,000 over three years to advance Natasha’s research program, “Precision fetal growth assessment: the right baby, the right care, the right time.” Based at the University of Melbourne and Mercy Hospital for Women, Natasha will combine protected research time with clinical practice as she transitions to consultant obstetrician-gynaecologist.
Every day, doctors and midwives make one of the most consequential decisions in pregnancy: is this baby safer remaining in the womb, or being born early? When the placenta begins to fail, a baby may not grow as expected and stillbirth risk rises. Detecting fetal growth restriction before birth, monitoring closely and planning birth at the right time can almost halve that risk. But birth is the only definitive treatment, and unnecessary early birth can also cause harm.
Natasha’s research addresses two linked challenges: measuring fetal size consistently, then interpreting what that size means in the context of the individual pregnancy. The aim is to better identify babies most likely to benefit from additional surveillance or earlier birth, while avoiding unnecessary intervention for lower-risk babies.
Building on FROGS
A major foundation for Natasha’s Fellowship is the Fetal Region-specific Optimised Growth Standard (FROGS), a free, open-source standard developed to address important weaknesses in current growth charts. FROGS is calibrated to Australian population data, adjusts for fetal sex, assigns an exact centile for each gestational day, and can be used consistently before and after birth.
FROGS was validated against stillbirth and other adverse outcomes in a statewide cohort of more than 750,000 births and compared with three widely used alternative approaches. All four charts classified a similar proportion of babies as small; FROGS’ advantage came from identifying babies at greater risk. It is now published, validated in Australia and ready for implementation.
The Fellowship will now move FROGS into practice. Natasha will audit more than 250 pregnancies to quantify the consequences of inconsistent chart use, refine clinician and consumer tools through surveys, interviews and usability testing, and implement FROGS across Mercy Hospital for Women, Werribee Mercy Hospital and Northern Hospital. The team will evaluate uptake, trust, correct use and workflow to understand what is needed for sustained implementation at scale.
A second stream of work will use approximately three million Australian births to move beyond the traditional 10th-centile threshold. Natasha will map risk across the full range of fetal size and examine how hypertension, diabetes, obesity, smoking, IVF conception, bleeding in pregnancy, fetal sex and gestation change what a baby’s size means. The goal is to develop clinically recognisable risk profiles for future precision risk assessment.
A clinician researcher building towards translation
Natasha brings a strong combination of clinical experience, perinatal epidemiology and research translation. She completed her MBBS at Monash University, a Master of Reproductive Medicine with Excellence at UNSW and a PhD at the University of Melbourne. Her 2026 CV lists 63 peer-reviewed publications, and her Fellowship application records $255,750 in competitive research funding and prizes over the previous five years.
She has been a Senior Research Fellow in Perinatal Epidemiology at the University of Melbourne since 2023 while completing specialist obstetrics and gynaecology training. She expects to complete training in November 2026 and commence work as a consultant obstetrician-gynaecologist from December 2026. The Fellowship will protect 0.6 FTE for research while maintaining 0.4 FTE clinical practice.
For the Foundation, Natasha’s appointment is a strong example of sustained research philanthropy: targeted Innovation Grants helped move FROGS from research findings towards a usable clinical tool; the Fellowship now backs the researcher and the next phase of translation, implementation and national influence.
The ambition is clear: one reliable way to measure fetal size, better evidence to interpret risk, and more confidence that the right baby receives the right care at the right time.
The Foundation looks forward to sharing Natasha’s progress and achievements throughout the 2027–2029 Fellowship.