The Collaborative Perinatal Project: a 50-year retrospective.

Fifty years after recruiting its first pregnant woman, the Collaborative Perinatal Project (CPP) remains a landmark in American maternal and child health epidemiological research. No U.S.-based study of pregnancy and childhood conducted before or since has matched its size, breadth and depth. The shadow of the CPP even looms long over the soon-to-begin-enrollment National Children's Study (NCS). The very concept of the NCS began at a small Federal planning meeting in 1998 when someone said “It's been 40 years since anyone has tried to conduct a large pregnancy cohort study in the United States,” and it is almost certain that the NCS and CPP will continue to be compared. When appropriate, I will draw parallels between the trials and tribulations of the CPP and those of the NCS.

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