Prepared for Woolworths Group · November 2026
We are seeking a sponsor to give 10,000 Australian women twelve months of pregnancy and breastfeeding support, and to fund an independently governed study of what actually happens to them.
The problem
The distance between those two numbers is not a matter of choice. It is a matter of preparation, support, and of when that support arrives.
Australia is not an outlier. Across the Western world the shape of this is the same: almost every woman starts, and most stop long before she meant to.
Source: 2010 Australian National Infant Feeding Survey, the only dedicated national survey Australia has ever run. Sixteen years later, it has never been repeated.
The shift
Maternal health is finally being taken seriously. In September 2026, Olivia and Tom Walton committed an initial US$100 million to halve maternal deaths in the United States by 2031. Health systems, insurers and employers are moving in the same direction. This is good news, and it is overdue.
The research has already set out what good support looks like. Philips Avent and the UC San Diego Human Milk Institute published the specification in June: standalone tools do not work. What is needed is continuous, connected care that does not reset between pregnancy, hospital, home and the return to work.
Breastfeeding sits at the centre of both maternal and infant health. It appears twice in the fifteen-page plan behind that hundred million dollars.
The specification is written and we already run it. What is missing is the evidence at scale, and that is what Next 10,000 produces.
The opportunity
Ten thousand pregnant women, prepared before birth with The Thompson Method and supported daily through My Milk Map. Within that cohort, the women in Australia who choose to take part form an implementation study, run under independent human research ethics approval.
Each woman is measured against her own stated intention rather than against other mothers, and followed for twelve months from birth. The result is a full year of prospective maternal and infant health data of a kind that does not currently exist in this country.
No woman will be enrolled in the research until ethics approval is granted.
Inside the app
Every sponsored woman gets twelve months of My Milk Map: The Thompson Method's education before birth, daily support after it, and a simple way to record what is happening, which is what makes the evidence possible.
A daily check-in, then four doors: My Map, Learn, Support and Wellness.
Dr Robyn's masterclasses, from colostrum onwards, ready before the baby arrives.
Live group calls every day with expert midwives and IBCLCs.
Feed by feed, she records what is happening, so she and her team can see it.
Her Data Wallet. Syncing and research sharing stay off until she turns them on.
Feeds, nappies, rest and mood in one picture. Never a score.
Why us
Dr Robyn Thompson PhD OAM, 1944 to 2025.
We are not starting from scratch. The Thompson Method began with Dr Robyn Thompson's PhD on nipple trauma, continued through the research programme at Mater Mothers' Hospital from which the method developed, and has been published twice. In Women and Birth in 2016, and independently by Allen and colleagues in the International Journal of Nursing Studies in 2023, across 13,667 mother and baby pairs. Professor Sue Kildea is a co-author across that body of work.
Then we implemented it. One hundred thousand women over eight years, with the support model rebuilt each year around what those women said they needed. My Milk Map is the result.
The method is proven. The delivery is proven. What has never been done is running both together, at scale, and measuring it properly.
The fit
Pregnant women and new mothers already shop with you every week. They are being sold to in a category where almost nobody is supporting them. This is not an audience to acquire, it is one to serve.
Healthylife's Living Healthy Report argues for shifting funding towards prevention over cure, and for treating health as an investment rather than an expense. The earliest and cheapest prevention window in a human life is the one currently missing.
You already publish a national health report built on real-world data. This gives Woolworths Group a chapter nobody else in Australia can write, built on prospective evidence rather than on recall.
Healthylife is the natural long-term home. Over time the program could connect with Everyday Rewards, rewarding women for preparing, never for their feeding outcomes.
The ask
Per woman
$100
Twelve months of preparation and daily support for one woman, from pregnancy through her baby's first year.
The full sponsorship
$1M
10,000 women, and a research cohort large enough to produce evidence that stands up.
A first step
$100K
1,000 women, to start together, see it working, then scale to 10,000.
Why 10,000? Every woman who joins gets the support, but not every woman will end up in the research. Taking part in the study is her choice, and some women won't be eligible. A mother who is already breastfeeding when she finds us, for example, can't be followed from pregnancy the way the study needs, and we would never turn her away from the education because of that. To finish with a cohort large enough to answer real questions, with enough women who stay for the full twelve months, we need to start with 10,000.
What a partner receives
Named acknowledgement on the project platform and in project communications, as a supporter of independent maternal health research.
Aggregate reporting on the reach and impact your support enabled: how many women, where, and what changed for them.
Support that goes directly to women who would not otherwise receive the program.
Association with what would be one of the largest prospective maternal health cohorts ever run in Australia.
The opportunity to communicate the partnership through your own health, wellbeing and community channels.
Briefings on research findings as they become available, while remaining independent from the scientific process.
The reassurance
Commercial funding of research is common and, provided it is transparent and appropriately managed, does not in itself impede ethics approval. The principles are straightforward: the funding relationship is disclosed, and the funder does not control the study design, the analysis, the interpretation, or the publication of results.
Built in from the start, because we have a commercial interest in the result and the Index will be making public arguments about data quality:
A partner can be recognised as a funder without controlling what the research finds or how it is reported. That separation is what makes the recognition worth having.
We would like 30 minutes with the right person at Woolworths Group to walk through the sponsorship, the 1,000-woman first step, and how the research stays independent. If it is a fit, we can start with the first 1,000 women.
Joanne Thompson, Custodian and CEO, The Thompson Method Group