Carosika Collaborative sets 2026 preterm birth education day for Auckland's Grafton Campus

The Carosika Collaborative will hold its 2026 annual education day, Mahi Tahi: Working together to improve preterm birth care, at the University of Auckland's Grafton Campus on Saturday 19 September 2026, running from 9am to 5pm.

The Collaborative's own event page gives the 2026 theme as "Collaboration" and describes a one-day event delivered through plenary sessions and workshops covering pregnancy care for both spontaneous and provider-initiated preterm birth. The listed topics are the psychological impact of preterm birth and supporting mental health; caesarean section and subsequent preterm birth; identifying and caring for those at risk of preterm birth; a Community of Practice supporting equity in spontaneous preterm birth care; case-based learning for spontaneous preterm birth and preterm fetal growth restriction; a whānau-led workshop titled "Stop, Collaborate and Listen"; the impact of Hapū Wānanga; and a student-led workshop on preterm birth essentials.

Registration runs through an Eventbrite listing published by the Liggins Institute, which carries the same date, the same 9am to 5pm running time and the venue address at 85 Park Road, Auckland 1023. The Eventbrite listing records the event as an eight-hour, in-person day and states that morning tea, lunch and afternoon tea are provided. A full 2026 programme is available for download from the Carosika Collaborative event page.

Who runs it

The Carosika Collaborative, which uses the name Taonga Tuku Iho, is a national transdisciplinary group hosted at the University of Auckland's Liggins Institute. According to the University of Auckland, it was established in 2020 following a national stakeholder hui and brings together whānau, community, healthcare professionals, healthcare services, researchers, policy-makers and funders. Its stated vision is that equity in preterm birth outcomes be achieved in Aotearoa by lowering preterm birth rates and optimising preterm birth care, with a goal of reducing the preterm birth rate by 20 percent.

The University of Auckland lists the Collaborative's Steering Group Chairperson as Professor Katie Groom and its Deputy Chairperson as Tina Allen-Mokaraka. The Collaborative's flagship output is Taonga Tuku Iho, described by the University as the first national best practice guide for preterm birth care in Aotearoa. The Collaborative's website names the Liggins Institute as a partner, The Little Miracles Trust as a supporter and Health New Zealand | Te Whatu Ora as a funder, alongside several donor organisations.

Education is one of the group's standing workstreams, and the September date continues an annual pattern. Eventbrite listings under the Liggins Institute organiser account show earlier Carosika education days including Manaakitanga in Preterm Birth Care in July 2025 and Preterm Birth: Update Your Practice in May 2024.

One of the 2026 session topics, the Carosika Community of Practice, has its own recent history. A University of Auckland article published in September 2025 reported that the Community of Practice was established in August 2024, led by Dr Lisa Dawes and Professor Katie Groom with PhD student Dr Briar Hunter, and that 17 of the 20 hospitals providing pregnancy care in New Zealand had committed to it, with 36 senior obstetricians and midwives taking part. The same article reported that Health Research Council funding for the 12-month pilot ended in August 2025 and that the Collaborative was seeking further support to continue it.

Who it's for

Both the Collaborative's page and the Eventbrite listing define the audience as midwives, obstetricians, GPs, neonatologists, community health providers, students, and whānau with lived experience of preterm birth. The Eventbrite listing notes that group registrations are available for midwives and for doctors-in-training, and that the organisers expect many clinical attendees to draw on continuing medical education funding through their workplace.

The mix is deliberate. Two of the eight listed sessions are led from outside the specialist clinical workforce: the "Stop, Collaborate and Listen" workshop is whānau-led, and the preterm birth essentials workshop is student-led. No attendance figure has been published by the organisers.

The venue

The Grafton Campus is the University of Auckland's medical campus and the home of its Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences. The University gives the address as 85 Park Road, Grafton, Auckland City, and describes the campus as sitting opposite Auckland City Hospital and the Auckland Domain, about a 20-minute walk from the University's City Campus.

On access, the University states that the campus sits on a number of major bus routes, including several that also run to the City Campus, and directs visitors to Auckland Transport for bus and train information. There is no dedicated student parking at Grafton; the University says only staff and limited visitor parking is available. Bike storage is provided in buildings 505 and 507. The campus has its own cafe, Student Hub, medical library and information commons, and a downloadable Grafton Campus map is published on the University website.

For an out-of-town clinical audience, the location places the event inside the Auckland City Hospital precinct and within short reach of the Grafton, Newmarket and central city accommodation areas, though the organisers have not published any accommodation arrangements for the day.

Why it matters for New Zealand MICE

The event is a clear example of a category that carries steady volume in the New Zealand business events market without ever appearing in headline convention statistics: the sector-body annual education day, run on a university campus, priced around continuing professional development budgets, and drawing a national professional audience to a single main centre for one day.

The scheduling choices are also typical of the format. A Saturday date keeps clinical rosters intact and reduces the cost of attendance for hospital employers, but it compresses the delivery window to a single day and pushes catering, room turnover and workshop breakouts into one continuous block. Full-day catering is included, and the programme splits between plenary and concurrent workshop formats, which requires a venue able to supply a main auditorium plus multiple breakout rooms on a weekend.

The national footprint of the Collaborative's clinical network gives the day a wider regional reach than the Auckland location alone suggests. With senior obstetricians and midwives from most of the country's maternity hospitals connected to the Carosika Community of Practice, a share of attendance is likely to involve domestic air travel and at least one night's accommodation in Auckland, in the shoulder period before the spring conference season.