The Perinatal Continuing Education Program (PCEP) was initially developed at the University of Virginia with funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Since expiration of the NIH contract in 1978, the authors have continued to work as a group to develop the program, keep the content up-to-date, and evaluate implementation results.

Who developed PCEP?

John Kattwinkel, MD, University of Virginia
Lynn J. Cook, RNC, MPH, University of Virginia
Hallam Hurt, MD, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia
George A. Nowacek, PhD, Wake Forest University
Jerry G. Short, PhD, University of Virginia
Warren M. Crosby, MD, University of Oklahoma

Where has PCEP been implemented?

United States

Staff from more than 200 regional medical centers (or comparable groups) in 43 states attended Perinatal Continuing Education Program training seminars. These centers, in turn, implemented PCEP in hundreds, possibly thousands, of hospitals, with participation by more than 150,000 obstetric and neonatal care providers. Some PCEP-trained centers have offered repeated cycles of the program as outreach education since the early 1980s.

The training seminars are no longer offered, but content covered in them has been incorporated into a PCEP Implementation Manual CD-ROM, useable by any hospital. Please see the 'Implementation-CD' page for further details.

U.S. Overseas Military Hospitals

U. S. military medical centers overseas have provided PCEP to U. S. hospitals in Japan, South Korea, Guam, Spain, Italy, and Germany. The staff of many stateside military hospitals also participate in PCEP through a major military medical center or a neighboring civilian regional medical center.

International Settings

The Perinatal Continuing Education Program has been adapted, translated, and implemented in Poland, Mexico, Bosnia, and China. It also has been used in Canada. PCEP served as the model for the Perinatal Education Programme (PEP), which was developed in South Africa and is used widely in that country as well as in Namibia, Botswana, and Zimbabwe (Perinatal Education Programme).

How have people learned about PCEP?

Results of implementation of the Perinatal Continuing Education Program have been presented in a number of peer-reviewed journal articles. Informational exhibits were displayed at professional meetings in 1979 and in 2000. Word-of-mouth, however, is the way most people learn about PCEP. No part of PCEP was commercially advertised until the American Academy of Pediatrics became publisher of the PCEP materials in 2007.