Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), a unit of the Department of Health and Human Services, is a U.S. government public health agency with a workforce of almost 6,000 persons currently under the direction of Dr. Julie Louise Gerberding. Headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, CDC has 10 other locations in the United States and Puerto Rico. CDC's mission encompasses several goals: (a) to protect the public's health and safety; (b) to educate the public through dissemination of reliable scientific health information; (c) to prevent and control disease, injury, and disability; and (d) to establish strong partnerships with numerous public and private entities such as local and state health departments, academic institutions, and international health organizations.

Following World War II, Dr. Joseph W. Mountin formed the Communicable Disease Center on July 1, 1946, in Atlanta as a peacetime infectious disease prevention agency based on the work of an earlier agency, the Malaria Control in War Areas. CDC's original focus was the problems of malaria and typhus, later broadening to diseases such as polio (1951) and smallpox (1966). In 1970, the agency became known as the Center for Disease Control to reflect its broader mission. In 1992, it added the term prevention to its name but remained known as CDC.

CDC is now organized into six coordinating offices for Global Health, Terrorism Preparedness and Emergency Response, Environmental Health and Injury Prevention, Health Information and Services, Health Promotion, and Infectious Diseases. These coordinating offices are further divided into 12 centers, each of which has its own areas of expertise and public health concerns. For instance, the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control aims to reduce mortality, disability, and costs related to injuries resulting from events such as motor vehicle accidents, youth violence, child maltreatment, and suicide. The National Center for Health Statistics documents the health status of the United States population, monitors trends in health care delivery and utilization, and evaluates the impact of health policies and programs through statistical computations. The Office of the Director is responsible for the management, oversight, and coordination of the scientific endeavors of all centers.

CDC's working budget for the fiscal year 2005 was estimated at $7.7 billion, with the highest appropriation assigned to efforts to combat HIV and AIDS. From its beginnings in 1946, with a budget of less than $10 million, CDC has become the nation's premiere public health agency with the stated vision for the 21st century of healthy people in a healthy world through prevention.