History of ​PEPP

The Pediatric Education for Prehospital Professionals (PEPP) Course has a rich history. It is the product of over 25 years of collaboration, brainstorming, review, and revision by many dedicated physicians, nurses, paramedics, emergency medical technicians (EMTs), and EMS educators interested in improving the quality of prehospital care for children.

The PEPP Course is the culmination of the best, most current, and most innovative educational efforts in prehospital pediatrics, including the pediatric components of the National EMS Education Standards for EMTs, advanced emergency medical technicians (AEMTs), and paramedics.

The PEPP Course began in 1990 as a distant vision of the California Pediatric Emergency and Critical Care Coalition and the California EMS for Children (EMSC) Project, funded by the California EMS Authority.

In 1992, the coalition's Pediatric Education for Paramedics (PEP) Task Force joined with the American College of Emergency Physician's Pediatric Emergency Medicine Committee and published Pediatric Education Guidelines for Paramedics. These guidelines were the first national consensus curriculum on prehospital pediatrics. Subsequently, a National PEP Task Force was formed which brought together representatives from the Florida Technical Advisory Panel for EMSC, the California PEP Task Force, and several other pediatric prehospital education groups. The new National PEP Task Force was funded by the Florida Emergency Medicine Foundation, who assumed a major leadership role in the project, and by the California EMS Authority.

In 1995, the National PEP Task Force produced its first course, the PEP Course, which built upon the outstanding work of several state EMSC projects, especially The Washington Pediatric Prehospital Care Project headed by Dena Brownstein, MD, and The California Pediatric Airway Project by Marianne Gausche-Hill, MD.

In 1998, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) established a National Steering Committee to restructure and expand the course. The AAP entered into a key partnership with Jones & Bartlett Learning a publisher with experience and a strong commitment to quality EMS education to produce the materials. The goal was to create a comprehensive, innovative, and highly visual pediatric course for both basic life support (BLS) and advanced life support (ALS) providers.

In 2000 the AAP rolled out the first PEPP courses.  Over the years, the course and textbook have been revised with the most up-to-date medical information. The Fourth Edition of PEPP was released in 2020, which included an enhanced hybrid course, class interactivity options, and the new PEPP Course Coordinator Orientation Update. Shortly after the initial course release, PEPP Continuing Education (Cont-Ed) Modules were launched. Today, the PEPP program has more than 16,000 instructors who have conducted over 40,000 domestic and international courses. Over the twenty four-year span, PEPP has trained more than 404,000 providers.

The PEPP Course is a dynamic teaching tool that will be subject to ongoing review and modification, in concert with changes in the science of emergency pediatrics and advances in EMS educational design and methodology. The National PEPP Steering Committee is committed to continual course improvement and dissemination to a national and international audience.