About the Division of Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine

The Division of Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine provides care for critically ill newborns and premature infants in North Carolina Children's Hospital's Newborn Critical Care Center (NCCC). The NCCC is a 48-bed facility served by 11 board-certified attending neonatologists, 12 nurse practitioners, and more than 150 neonatal specialists from UNC Hospitals.

The Center averages 750 admissions annually, providing care to newborns from over 50 counties in North Carolina.  The newborns we see are typically within the first 28 days of life and were born either prematurely (i.e., before the end of the 37th week of pregnancy, full-term being 40 weeks) or with life-threatening birth defects or medical conditions.

Special Infant Care Clinic (SICC)

Following discharge, many of our patient — or "graduates" as we like to call them—are evaluated in the Special Infant Care Clinic (SICC), a specialty outpatient clinic designed to assist community health care providers and promote the best developmental outcomes for these children. The clinic offers a multidisciplinary approach to the developmental follow-up of high-risk infants from birth to 2 years of age, complementing the health care provided in the local community.

Research

As part of UNC School of Medicine's Department of Pediatrics, the Neonatal-Perinatal Division is extensively involved in ongoing clinical research with the goal of improving care delivered to critically ill newborns, not just at N.C. Children's Hospital but throughout the nation and around the world. Our faculty and staff have diverse research interests and are engaged in numerous laboratory and clinical research activities at any given time.

Family-Centered Care

With tremendous medical advances in recent years, you can find even the tiniest of babies — some weighing just a pound — receiving state-of-the-art care in the NCCC, parents at their bedsides. Our care providers put the family at the center of the treatment process. In fact, the Division of Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine pioneered N.C. Children's Hospital's Family-Centered Care Initiative, establishing a Family Advisory Board (FAB) in January 2006.