Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, U.S.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is an agency within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). It is dedicated to promoting health and quality of life by preventing and controlling disease, injury, and disability and to preparing for new health threats in the United States. The CDC is an important provider of critical information related to its mission; this information often forms the backbone of breaking news about emerging health-related conditions. In addition, the CDC's National Center for Health Marketing provides resources and information specifically related to health communication efforts. Communication is central to the accomplishment of the CDC's public health mission.

The Communicable Disease Center, the predecessor of the CDC, was established on July 1, 1946, in Atlanta, Georgia. It was then a branch of the U.S. Public Health Service, a part of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, which later became HHS. In the very beginning, the CDC focused on controlling malaria, largely through the use of the pesticide DDT. However, the founder of this small agency, Joseph W. Moustin, envisioned a more crucial role that the CDC could play in public health. Moustin pushed the CDC to expand its mission to include concern with any communicable diseases except for tuberculosis and venereal disease, which at that time had separate units in Washington, D.C. Moustin's dreams were realized as the CDC quickly became the center of epidemiology work for the United States.

One of the keys to the CDC's success has been disease surveillance. In 1949, Alexander Langmuir launched the first-ever disease surveillance program to monitor the progression of disease. This program confirmed the eradication of malaria, which became one of the first milestones of the CDC's achievements in public health. The surveillance program later successfully traced poliomyelitis cases in children to defective vaccine. It also traced the cause of a massive influenza epidemic in 1957. These achievements showed the CDC's indispensability in protecting citizens' health. It was not long before the CDC finally acquired the [Page 122]responsibility of monitoring and responding to venereal disease and tuberculosis. By the 1970s and 1980s, the CDC was successfully tracking and monitoring a broad range of new disease outbreaks including Legionnaires' disease (1976), toxic shock syndrome (1980), and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS, first documented by CDC in 1981).

The CDC continued to expand its focus with the establishment of new programs and the acquisition of existing programs. With the addition in the 1950s and 1960s of a variety of new programs, the CDC became a much more diversified agency that had broadened its scope beyond monitoring communicable disease. Therefore, in 1970, its name was changed to the Centers for Disease Control, and the acronym CDC was retained. As part of its growth, the CDC joined with international public health programs in worldwide disease control efforts. One of the most noticeable contributions was the global eradication of smallpox, which was officially accomplished by 1977. The CDC is now one of only two repositories in the world that has the smallpox virus, which is contained in its high-security Biosafety Level 4 laboratories.

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