Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)

Logo of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Source: Wikimedia Commons.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is the federal public health agency of the United States. It is a part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the primary Federal agency for conducting and supporting public health activities in the United States.

The CDC's mission is to promote health and quality of life by preventing and controlling disease, injury, and disability.

The CDC′s vision for the 21st Century is healthy people in a healthy world through prevention.

CDC’s focus is not only on scientific excellence but also on the essential spirit that is CDC – to protect the health of all people. CDC keeps humanity at the forefront of its mission to ensure health protection through promotion, prevention, and preparedness.

Programs and Campaigns

Health Protection Goals

CDC has created a set of four overarching Health Protection Goals, which are supported by a number of strategic goals and objectives. More information is available on the CDC's website. ^[1]

• Healthy people in every stage of life: All people, and especially those at greater risk of health disparities, will achieve their optimal lifespan with the best possible quality of health in every stage of life.
• Healthy people in healthy places: The places where people live, work, learn, and play will protect and promote their health and safety, especially those people at greater risk of health disparities.
• People prepared for emerging health threats: People in all communities will be protected from infectious, occupational, environmental, and terrorist threats.
• Healthy people in a healthy world: People around the world will live safer, healthier and longer lives through health promotion, health protection, and health diplomacy.

Health System Transformation Lecture Series

CDC and Emory University’s Institute for Advanced Policy Solutions in partnership with the CDC Foundation are conducting a series of lectures on health system transformation during 2008. This lecture series is intended to create a larger forum of discussion regarding health system transformation, health care reform, and health policies. More information is available on the CDC's web site. ^[2]

History

The Communicable Disease Center was organized in Atlanta, Georgia on July 1, 1946; its founder, Dr. Joseph W. Mountin, was a visionary public health leader who had high hopes for this small (400 employees) branch of the Public Health Service (PHS). The new institution would expand its interests to include all communicable diseases and provide practical help to all states whenever called. Distinguished scientists soon filled CDC’s laboratories, and many states and foreign countries sent their public health staffs to Atlanta for training. Dr. Mountin was not satisfied with this progress, and he impatiently pushed the staff to do more. He reminded them that except for tuberculosis and venereal disease, which had separate units in Washington, DC, CDC was responsible for any communicable disease. To survive, it had to become a center for epidemiology.

Medical epidemiologists were scarce, and it was not until 1949 that Dr. Alexander Langmuir arrived to head the epidemiology branch. Within months, he launched the first-ever disease surveillance program. Subsequently, disease surveillance became the cornerstone on which CDC’s mission of service to the states was built and, in time, changed the practice of public health. The outbreak of the Korean War in 1950 was the impetus for creating CDC’s Epidemiological Intelligence Service (EIS).

Two major health crises in the mid-1950s established CDC’s credibility and ensured its survival. In 1955, when poliomyelitis appeared in children who had received the recently approved Salk vaccine, the national inoculation program was stopped. The cases were traced to contaminated vaccine from a laboratory in California; the problem was corrected, and the inoculation program, at least for first and second graders, was resumed. The resistance of these 6- and 7-year-olds to polio, compared with that of older children, proved the effectiveness of the vaccine. Two years later, surveillance was used again to trace the course of a massive influenza epidemic. From the data gathered in 1957 and subsequent years, the national guidelines for influenza vaccine were developed.

The venereal disease program came to Atlanta in 1957 and with it the first public health advisors. The tuberculosis program moved in 1960, immunization practices and the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report in 1961. The Foreign Quarantine Service, one of the oldest and most prestigious units of PHS, came in 1967. The long-established nutrition program also moved to CDC, as well as the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, and work of already established units increased. Immunization tackled measles and rubella control; epidemiology added family planning and surveillance of chronic diseases.

CDC played a key role in one of the greatest triumphs of public health, the eradication of smallpox. In 1962 it established a smallpox surveillance unit, and a year later tested a newly developed jet gun and vaccine in the Pacific island nation of Tonga. After refining vaccination techniques in Brazil, CDC began work in Central and West Africa in 1966. When millions of people there had been vaccinated, CDC used surveillance to speed the work along. The World Health Organization used this "eradication escalation" technique elsewhere with such success that global eradication of smallpox was achieved in 1977. The United States spent only $32 million on the project, about the cost of keeping smallpox at bay for 2.5 months.

CDC also achieved notable success at home tracking new and mysterious disease outbreaks. In the mid-1970s and early 1980s, it found the cause of Legionnaires disease and toxic-shock syndrome. A fatal disease, subsequently named acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), was first mentioned in the June 5, 1981, issue of MMWR. Since then, MMWR has published numerous follow-up articles about AIDS, and one of the largest portions of CDC’s budget and staff is assigned to address this disease.

As the scope of CDC’s activities expanded far beyond communicable diseases, its name had to be changed. In 1970 it became the Center for Disease Control and in 1981, after extensive reorganization, Center became Centers. The words "and Prevention" were added in 1992, but, by law, the well-known three-letter acronym was retained.

Organizational Structure

Composed of the Office of the Director, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, and six Coordinating Centers/ Offices, including environmental health and injury prevention, health information services, health promotion, infectious diseases, global health and terrorism preparedness and emergency response, CDC employs more than 14,000 employees in 40 countries and in 170 occupations.

Leadership

CDC’s four primary leadership groups are: Executive Leadership Board (ELB), Management Council (MC), Center Leadership Council (CLC), and the Division Director's Council and Steering Committee (DDC and DDSC).

The current CDC director is Julie Louise Gerberding, MD, MPH. Dr. Gerberding has been leading the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Administrator of the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) since July 2002. She also serves as a Clinical Professor of Medicine at Emory University and an Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of California at San Francisco.

Publications

The CDC has numerous publications organized by topic on their web site. ^[3] Some of the top publications include:

Emerging Infectious Diseases

This journal is published monthly by the Coordinating Center for Infectious Diseases. Emerging Infectious Diseases receives more than 1,700 manuscripts per year (most unsolicited, some invited) from authors around the world. There are an estimated 26,000 subscribers to the print version of the journal (>6,000 outside the United States) and another 23,000 subscribers to the electronic version. The journal site receives hundreds of thousands of hits per month (CDC Web Statistics).

The Guide to Community Preventive Services

This book is available in its complete form from the CDC's website. Individual chapters can also be downloaded from the website.

Epi Info

With Epi Info™ and a personal computer, epidemiologists and other public health and medical professionals can rapidly develop a questionnaire or form, customize the data entry process, and enter and analyze data. Epidemiologic statistics, tables, graphs, and maps are produced with simple commands such as READ, FREQ, LIST, TABLES, GRAPH, and MAP. Epi Map displays geographic maps with data from Epi Info™.

Medical Management Guidelines (MMGs) for acute chemical exposures

The Medical Management Guidelines (MMGs) for Acute Chemical Exposures were developed to aid emergency department physicians and other emergency healthcare professionals who manage acute exposures resulting from chemical incidents.

The MMGs provide:

• Basic chemical and exposure information,
• A summary of potential health effects,
• Prehospital management information,
• Emergency department management information, and
• Information for the patient.

Preventing Chronic Disease

Preventing Chronic Disease (PCD) is a peer-reviewed electronic journal established to provide a forum for public health researchers and practitioners to share study results and practical experience. The journal is published by the National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, one of eight centers within the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The mission of the journal is to address the interface between applied prevention research and public health practice in chronic disease prevention. PCD focuses on preventing diseases such as cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and stroke, which are among the leading causes of death and disability in the United States.

The Public Health Law News

The CDC Public Health Law News is a weekly e-mail digest of current, worldwide news stories, court opinions, announcements and special features related to public health law and legislation. The News is free and available to anyone with an interest in public health law.. The reporting week concludes at close of business on Friday; compiled data on a national basis are officially released to the public on the succeeding Friday.

Research Guide

Advancing the Nation’s Health: A Guide to Public Health Research Needs, 2006-2015 (Research Guide) is helping academicians and practitioners articulate critical research needs.

Sexually Transmitted Diseases Treatment Guidelines, 2006

These guidelines for the treatment of persons who have sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) were developed by CDC after consultation with a group of professionals knowledgeable in the field of STDs who met in Atlanta, Georgia, during April 19–21, 2005. The information in this report updates the Sexually Transmitted Diseases Treatment Guidelines, 2002.

Teachers' Tools

This archived electronic resource available on the CDC's website includes a list of educational resources for teachers at the K - 12 levels.

The Yellow Book

CDC Health Information for International Travel, known as the Yellow Book, is published every two years as a reference for those who advise international travelers of health risks. The Yellow Book is written primarily for healthcare providers, although others may find it useful.

Statistics

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has its own National Centers for Health Statistics. ^[4]

Controversy

Although CDC has succeeded more often than it failed, it has not escaped criticism. For example, television and press reports about the Tuskegee study on long-term effects of untreated syphilis in black men created a storm of protest in 1972. This study had been initiated by PHS and other organizations in 1932 and was transferred to CDC in 1957. Although the effectiveness of penicillin as a therapy for syphilis had been established during the late 1940s, participants in this study remained untreated until the study was brought to public attention. CDC was also criticized because of the 1976 effort to vaccinate the U.S. population against swine flu, the infamous killer of 1918-19. When some vaccinees developed Guillain-Barre syndrome, the campaign was stopped immediately; the epidemic never occurred.

Fifty years ago CDC’s agenda was non-controversial (hardly anyone objected to the pursuit of germs), and Atlanta was a backwater. In 1996, CDC’s programs are often tied to economic, political, and social issues, and Atlanta is as near Washington as the tap of a keyboard.

Related Videos

In this video, you can take a tour of CDC's command center for emergency responses to domestic and international public health threats.

References

1. ↑ Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. CDC's Health Protection Goals
2. ↑ Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Health System Transformation Lecture Series
3. ↑ Centers for Disease Control. Publications
4. ↑ Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. National Centers for Health Statistics

External Links

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: Home Page

Contact Information:

• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; 1600 Clifton Rd; Atlanta, GA 30333
• 800-CDC-INFO; (800-232-4636); TTY: (888) 232-6348; 24 Hours/Every Day
• cdcinfo@cdc.gov