Essential Newborn Care Course
Course overview
The Essential Newborn Care Course 2nd edition is designed for health workers who care for newborns in low resource settings. Essential Newborn Care 1 (formerly Helping Babies Breathe) focuses on training providers to care for newborns immediately after delivery and lifesaving neonatal resuscitation and care during the first 60 minutes of life. Essential Newborn Care 2 (formerly Essential Care for Every Baby and Essential Care for the Small Baby) focuses on providing care from 60 to 90 minutes of life through the first month of life. This also covers recognition and care of sick newborns, premature and low birthweight newborns. The second edition of this course incorporates guidance from recent World Health Organization recommendations; addresses global gaps in care; and includes links to key references and resources. The updated course focuses on contemporary learning methods so that learners can train at their own pace and trainers can deliver content in person or virtually. Quality Improvement is prioritized, and learners will be introduced to new templates and the use of local data for sustained improvement.
The Center for Global Health will be offering a course focused on Implementation and Quality Improvement of Essential Newborn Care Course (ENCC) 2nd edition. This course is open to anyone who is currently teaching ENCC or plans to teach ENCC in the future.
At the end of this course learners will be able to:
- Identify the Essential Newborn Care Model’s effect on Neonatal and Maternal Outcomes
- Identify gaps in the learner’s current newborn care approach using the Essential Newborn Care Guidelines
- Identify the impact of outcomes data on Quality Improvement (QI) projects
- Identify barriers to implementation of QI projects designed to address gaps in newborn care.
- Acquire the skills needed to design a quality improvement project to address gaps in newborn care
Course dates: September 23rd – September 25th, 2025
Location: Ed2N P28 building (Education 2 North; Physical address: 13120 E 19th Ave, Aurora, CO 80045)
Please check back for opportunities to register for the ENCC 1 and 2 training courses in 2026.
Frequently asked questions
Looking for the most updated Essential Newborn Care (ENC) resources for Helping Mothers and Babies Survive?
You may be interested in the newly released World Health Organization Essential Newborn Care Course (WHO ENC).
This educational program incorporates the content and methodology of Helping Babies Breathe, Essential Care for Every Baby and Essential Care for Small Babies.
In addition, there are a series of thematic modules to explore topics in more depth and many new resources – including Global Health Media Project videos, Simulation and Clinical Practice Cards, and integration of quality improvement within the framework of the course and extending afterwards.
The new educational materials are available in pdf format for face-to-face education, delivered in the same style as the Helping Babies Breathe workshops. ENC 1 (an expanded and improved HBB) is also available as an online course for hybrid learning with facilitated skills practice, assessments, and quality improvement.
All new materials can be accessed on the WHO site for face-to-face materials and feedback form. Additionally, we recommend checking out the Helping Mothers and Babies Survive website for both face-to-face and online educational materials. This site was created by the American Academy of Pediatrics, Jhpiego, and Laerdal.