Why Preventative Maternal Health Must Start Before the 6-Week Check
Who I Am and Why Maternal Health Is Personal to Me
My name is Mari-Carmen Sanchez-Morris. I am a qualified nurse, women’s health coach, mother of three, and founder of Matresa, a preventative maternal health platform designed to improve outcomes from preconception through motherhood. My commitment to maternal health is both professional and deeply personal. After years working clinically and then navigating motherhood myself, I have seen first-hand where our systems support women, and where they fail them.
What the Women’s Health Conference Revealed About Maternal Health Today
Last week, my team and I attended the Women’s Health Conference in London, a three-day event bringing together founders, investors, clinicians, policymakers, and innovators working to improve women’s health outcomes.
It was encouraging to see so many people in one room united by a shared purpose. But it was also a sobering reminder that this conversation is not about markets or trends, it is about lives, families, and futures.
Maternal Health Is Not a Market Problem, It’s a Systems Failure
In the UK, maternal deaths have reached their highest level in twenty years, and up to one in five women experiences a mental health problem during pregnancy or in the year after birth. These are not isolated “women’s issues”.
The consequences ripple outward affecting families, workplaces, and the wider economy. Within five years of having a first child, the average UK mother loses around £65,000 in earnings, contributing to the well-documented motherhood penalty and forcing many women out of sustainable, long-term careers.
While closing the women’s health gap is estimated to unlock nearly $1 trillion in global GDP annually, the reason to act is far simpler than economics. When we prioritise maternal health with compassion and evidence, we save lives and build a fairer, healthier society for everyone.
Why the 6-Week Postnatal Check Is Too Little, Too Late
At the end of Day One, Dame Lesley Regan’s keynote left a lasting impression. She spoke about the need for an “imaginary door”, a way for innovation to move more easily through the NHS and government systems so that new treatments, technologies, and pathways can reach women faster.
As a nurse, I know how deeply entrenched bureaucracy can slow meaningful change. Her words offered hope but also a reminder of how urgently we must act.
I have long believed that the moment a woman sees a positive or negative pregnancy test, care pathways should pivot. That is where personalised, preventative maternal healthcare should begin not at a rushed 6-week check where the mother’s needs are often secondary to the baby’s appointment.
What Gets Missed in Postnatal Care
Too often, the 6-week postnatal check is:
Combined with baby vaccinations
Time-pressured
Focused on physical recovery alone
As a result, vital signals are missed including mental health concerns, blood pressure trends, exhaustion, pain, and emotional distress. Many mothers tell me they leave these appointments feeling unseen and unsupported.
By the time issues are identified, intervention is often too late, more complex, and more costly emotionally and medically.
Fragmentation in Maternal Healthcare Is Costing Lives
One of the greatest challenges in maternal health today is fragmentation.
Care remains disjointed. Data sits in silos. Communication breaks down between appointments, departments, and stages of care. A mother’s prenatal experience is often disconnected entirely from her postnatal support.
How can we support a mother after birth if we don’t understand what happened before it?
Why Continuity of Care Must Start at Preconception
True preventative care must begin at preconception.
By capturing health data earlier including blood pressure trends, sleep quality, stress levels, emotional wellbeing, and lifestyle markers we can:
Identify risk sooner
Personalise care pathways
Deliver timely, meaningful interventions
Preventative maternal health is not about reacting faster. It is about anticipating risk and acting before harm occurs.
The Case for Preventative, Digitally-Enabled Maternal Health
This need is echoed across evidence and policy. The NHS Long Term Plan calls for digitally-enabled, personalised care pathways to reduce inequalities and improve outcomes. The Lancet Maternal Health Series goes further, describing current maternal health systems as “too reactive, too fragmented, and too late.” The message is clear: maternal healthcare must shift from episodic care to continuous, integrated, preventative support.
Building Preventative Maternal Health Infrastructure with Matresa
This is exactly what we are building with Matresa.
Matresa is a connected maternal health ecosystem supporting women from preconception through pregnancy, postpartum, and into the first four years of a child’s life. By integrating with existing healthcare and workplace pathways, Matresa enables continuity of care, early risk detection, and proactive support, when it matters most. Our goal is simple but ambitious: to make preventative maternal healthcare the norm, not the exception.
Why We Must Act Now for Mothers, Families, and the Future
Infrastructure without urgency is still inertia.
Every delay costs real lives, real wellbeing, and real opportunity. We have the evidence. We have the technology. What we need now is the collective will to redesign maternal health systems around prevention, continuity, and compassion.