The Collaborative Perinatal Project (abbreviated CPP), also known as the National Collaborative Perinatal Project (or NCPP), was a multisite
prospective cohort study designed to identify the effects of complications during either
pregnancy or the
perinatal period
Prenatal development () includes the development of the embryo and of the fetus during a viviparous animal's gestation. Prenatal development starts with fertilization, in the germinal stage of embryonic development, and continues in fetal deve ...
on birth and child outcomes, especially neurological disorders such as
cerebral palsy. It was conducted by the
on over 55,000 pregnant mothers at 12 sites across the
United States from 1959 to 1965.
It is one of the largest and broadest epidemiological studies in American history; according to Mark Klebanoff, "No U.S.-based study of pregnancy and childhood conducted before or since has matched its size, breadth and depth".
History
The CPP originated in 1954, when funding for the study was approved as a
line item in the budget of the
National Institute of Neurological Diseases and Blindness
The National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) is a part of the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH). It conducts and funds research on brain and nervous system disorders and has a budget of just over US$2.03 billion. The ...
(later renamed the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke). It was originally dubbed the "Collaborative Study of Cerebral Palsy, Mental Retardation and Other Neurological and Sensory Disorders of Infants and Children". It was later renamed the Cerebral Palsy Project, and then renamed again to the Collaborative Perinatal Project. More recently, the word "National" has often been added to the name of the study. It was controversial from its inception, with critics arguing that the data being collected was of poor quality, and that the funding for the study would be better spent a larger number of smaller, more focused projects. Nevertheless, later validation studies demonstrated that the study's data was actually high-quality.
Methods
The CPP enrolled its first woman on January 2, 1959. It was conducted at 12 academic centers, which had the advantage of facilitating expert involvement in the research and to complete follow-up, but had the drawback of decreasing representativeness. Each of the centers also had its own
sampling frame, but many audits were developed to ensure that participants who were recruited were representative of the sampling frame.
Researchers collected data on participants' "pre-pregnancy weight, height, and time to pregnancy; demographic and smoking related data; and reproductive, medical, and gynecological history."
Maternal serum screening
Prenatal testing consists of prenatal screening and prenatal diagnosis, which are aspects of prenatal care that focus on detecting problems with the pregnancy as early as possible. These may be anatomy, anatomic and physiology, physiologic proble ...
was also performed on each woman at each study visit.
Published results
The first major report describing the study's findings was ''The Women and Their Pregnancies'', published in 1972. The study also followed up on 37,431 babies born from 1959 to 1966; the results of this follow-up were described in the 1979 book ''The First Year of Life''.
References
{{Reflist
External links
National Collaborative Perinatal Project, 1959-1974
Epidemiological study projects
Cohort studies
National Institutes of Health
Maternity in the United States