Discussion: Disease Control and Prevention
Discussion: Disease Control and Prevention
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC]. Solve the outbreak. Disease detective. Retrieved from
Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion. (2017). Partnering to heal. Retrieved from
Create a journal entry of 200-250 words reflecting on your personal experiences or thoughts regarding the activities at these sites, the content and epidemiological methods utilized. Are you able to identify modes of transmission and implement interventions better with these learning tools? Have you ever participated in an outbreak investigation or care of a person during such an event? Share your insights to outbreak investigation and the use of epidemiology tools.
The Communicable Disease Center was founded July 1, 1946, as the successor to the program of the Office of National Defense Malaria Control Activities.
Preceding its founding, organizations with global influence in control were the Malaria Commission of the and the . The Rockefeller Foundation greatly supported malaria control, sought to have the governments take over some of its efforts, and collaborated with the agency.
The new agency was a branch of the and Atlanta was chosen as the location because was endemic in the Southern United States. The agency changed names (see infobox on top) before adopting the name Communicable Disease Center in 1946. Offices were located on the sixth floor of the Volunteer Building on Peachtree Street.
With a budget at the time of about $1 million, 59 percent of its personnel were engaged in abatement and habitat control with the objective of control and eradication of malaria in the United States (see ).
Among its 369 employees, the main jobs at CDC were originally and engineering. In CDC’s initial years, more than six and a half million homes were sprayed, mostly with . In 1946, there were only seven medical officers on duty and an early organization chart was drawn, somewhat fancifully, in the shape of a mosquito. Under , the CDC continued to advocate for public health issues and pushed to extend its responsibilities to many other .
In 1947, the CDC made a token payment of $10 to for 15 acres (61,000 m2) of land on Clifton Road in DeKalb County, still the home of CDC headquarters today.[] CDC employees collected the money to make the purchase. The benefactor behind the “gift” was , of . Woodruff had a long-time interest in control, which had been a problem in areas where he went hunting. The same year, the PHS transferred its San Francisco based plague laboratory into the CDC as the Epidemiology Division, and a new Veterinary Diseases Division was established. An (EIS) was established in 1951, originally due to biological warfare concerns arising from the Korean War; it evolved into two-year postgraduate training program in epidemiology, and a prototype for (FETP), now[] found in numerous countries, reflecting CDC’s influence in promoting this model internationally. Permalink:
The mission of CDC expanded beyond its original focus on malaria to include when the Venereal Disease Division of the U.S. Public Health Service (PHS) was transferred to the CDC in 1957. Shortly thereafter, Tuberculosis Control was transferred (in 1960) to the CDC from PHS, and then in 1963 the Immunization program was established.
It became the National Communicable Disease Center (NCDC) effective July 1, 1967. The organization was renamed the Center for Disease Control (CDC) on June 24, 1970, and Centers for Disease Control effective October 14, 1980. An act of the appended the words “and Prevention” to the name effective October 27, 1992. However, Congress directed that the initialism CDC be retained because of its name recognition.
Currently[], the CDC focus has broadened to include , , injury control, , threats, and terrorism preparedness. CDC combats emerging diseases and other health risks, including , , , , , and , , and , to name a few. The organization would also prove to be an important factor in preventing the abuse of . In May 1994 the CDC admitted having sent several biological warfare agents to the Iraqi government from 1984 through 1989, including , , and virus.
On April 21, 2005, then–CDC Director formally announced the reorganization of CDC to “confront the challenges of 21st-century health threats”. The four Coordinating Centers—established under the and Gerberding—”diminished the influence of national centers under [their] umbrella”,[] and were ordered cut under the in 2009.
Today[], the CDC’s laboratories are among the few that exist in the world, and serve as one of only two official repositories of in the world. The second smallpox store resides at the in the Russian Federation. The CDC revealed in 2014 that it had discovered several misplaced smallpox samples and also that lab workers had potentially been infected with anthrax.
