Everything about The Centers For Disease Control And Prevention totally explained
The
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (or
CDC) is an agency of the
United States Department of Health and Human Services based in unincorporated
DeKalb County,
Georgia adjacent to the campus of
Emory University and east of the city of
Atlanta. It works to protect
public health and
safety by providing information to enhance health decisions, and it promotes health through partnerships with state health departments and other organizations. The CDC focuses national attention on developing and applying disease prevention and control (especially
infectious diseases),
environmental health,
occupational safety and health,
health promotion,
prevention and
education activities designed to improve the health of the people of the United States.
History
On July 1, 1946, the Communicable Disease Center was established as a small branch of the U.S. Public Health Service and was located on the sixth floor of the Volunteer Building on Peachtree Street in Atlanta, Georgia, hundreds of miles from Washington, D.C., and other federal agencies and in what was once the heart of the malaria zone. The new agency was descended from the wartime agency, Malaria Control in War Areas.
CDC initially focused on fighting malaria by killing mosquitoes. During the first year of operations, 59 percent of its personnel were engaged in this effort. Among its 369 employees, the key jobs at CDC were originally entomology and engineering. In 1946, there were only seven medical officers on duty.
At that time CDC’s budget was about $1 million. The insecticide DDT, available since 1943, was the primary weapon in the malaria fight, and CDC’s early challenges included obtaining enough trucks, sprayers, and shovels to wage the war on mosquitoes. In CDC’s initial years, more than six and a half million homes were sprayed, and an early organization chart was drawn, somewhat fancifully, in the shape of a mosquito.
CDC founder Dr. Joseph Mountin continued to advocate for public health issues and to push for CDC to extend its responsibilities to many other communicable diseases. In 1947, CDC made a token payment of $10 to Emory University for 15 acres of land on Clifton Road in Atlanta, the home of CDC headquarters today. CDC employees collected the money to make the purchase. The benefactor behind the “gift” was Robert Woodruff, Chairman of the Board of the Coca-Cola Company. Woodruff had a long-time interest in malaria control; it had been a problem in areas where he went hunting.
Today, CDC is the nation's premier health promotion, prevention, and preparedness agency and a global leader in public health. During the past 60 years, its name has changed to reflect its more complex mission. While it’s still known by the initials CDC, the agency’s name today is Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In the six decades since its founding, CDC has grown dramatically in staff, budget and mission. Now the world authority on communicable disease, CDC has broadened its focus to include chronic diseases, disabilities, injury control, workplace hazards, environmental health threats, and terrorism preparedness. CDC tackles emerging diseases and other health risks, including birth defects, West Nile virus, obesity, avian and
pandemic flu, E. coli, auto wrecks, and bioterrorism, to name a few.
CDC remains committed to its vision of healthy people in a healthy world. Now part of the Department of Health and Human Services, CDC applies research and findings to improve people’s daily lives and responds to health emergencies. World-class scientists now work in world-class facilities.
The CDC has one of the few
Bio-Safety Level 4 laboratories in the country, as well as one of only two "official" repositories of
smallpox in the world. The second smallpox store reside at the
State Research Center of Virology and Biotechnology VECTOR in the
Russian Federation, though it's possible that other countries may have obtained samples during the collapse of the
Soviet Union.
Budget and workforce
CDC’s budget for 2008 is $8.8 billion. Today the staff numbers nearly 15,000 (including 6,000 contractors and 840 Commissioned Corps officers) in 170 occupations. Engineers, entomologists, epidemiologists, biologists, physicians, veterinarians, behaviorial scientists, nurses, medical technologists, economists, health communicators, toxicologists, chemists, computer scientists, and statisticians—to name only a few—each are dedicated to the pursuit of public health.
CDC is headquartered in DeKalb County, Georgia, but it has 10 other locations in the United States and Puerto Rico. Those locations include
Anchorage, Alaska;
Cincinnati, Ohio;
Fort Collins, Colorado;
Hyattsville, Maryland;
Morgantown, West Virginia;
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania;
Research Triangle Park, North Carolina;
San Juan, Puerto Rico;
Spokane, Washington; and
Washington, D.C. In addition, CDC staff are located in state and local health agencies, quarantine/border health offices at ports of entry, and 45 countries around the world, from Angola to Zimbabwe.
The work force is diverse and well qualified. More than a third of CDC’s employees are members of a racial or ethnic minority group, and women account for nearly 60 percent of CDC’s workforce. Nearly 40 percent of employees have a master’s degree; 25 percent have a Ph.D.; and 10 percent have medical degrees. The average age of a CDC worker is 46.
The CDC campus in Atlanta houses facilities for the research of extremely dangerous biological agents. This setting was well represented in the Dustin Hoffman film
Outbreak, although the location depicted in the film was supposed to be the
United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases bio-research facility. The CDC labs also figure prominently in the book "
The Demon in the Freezer" by
Richard Preston and "Virus Hunter" by C.J. Peters, former head of the Special Pathogens Branch at the CDC.
The CDC also conducts the
Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, the world’s largest, on-going telephone health survey system.
Organizational Structure
CDC consists of centers which include the Coordinating Center for Infectious Disease, Coordinating Center for Environmental and Occupational Health and Injury Prevention, Coordinating Center for Health Promotion, and Coordinating Center for Public Health and Information Services.
CDC timeline
CDC Timeline
Data and survey systems
Publications
Comprehensive list of publications and products
State of CDC report
CDC Programs in Brief
Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report
Emerging Infectious Disease Journal
Notes and references
Further Information
Get more info on 'Centers For Disease Control And Prevention'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://centers_for_disease_control_and_prevention.totallyexplained.com">Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
