CDC: 60 Years of Excellence
With thousands of professionals in the United States and in 46 countries worldwide, working on issues ranging from Avian influenza,to obesity,to violence in schools,the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is the nation's leading public health agency.
The CDC inspires trust and embodies the scientific knowledge that has been protecting the health of Americans—and people around the world—since 1946. Over the last 60 years, the world class scientists and staff at the CDC have helped people to live safer, healthier, and longer lives. CDC and its partners are proud of their public health accomplishments, including their pioneering work in malaria control, helping to eradicate smallpox from the planet, identifying and reporting the first cases of AIDS, working to reduce tobacco use, obesity, diabetes, and creating the widely respected Epidemic Intelligence Service. CDC has been,and remains, the agency that the nation and the world trust in the face of a public health emergency.
From its Atlanta campus to the most remote location imaginable, today's CDC has a complex mission that reflects ever-changing public health needs in the areas of healthy people, healthy places, preparedness, and global health.
1940s- Tod a]
60 Years in the War on Malaria
.nd supporting
It's fitting that CDC's Malaria Branch has bee
the President's Malaria Initiative (PMI), announced in 2005, as this dis was the agency's raison d'etre at its founding in 1946. From its start as part of the U.S. Public Health Service's war on malaria in the United States, CDC has remained at the forefront of the fight, though the battleground has shifted to developing nations abroad.
PMI brings together the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Department of Health and Human Services to provide support to National Malaria Control Programs in coordination with other donors, including the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria, and the World Bank Booster Program. This $ 1.2 billion, 5-year effort aims to cut malaria-related deaths by half in 15 African countries by supporting an integrated, comprehensive package of malaria prevention and control interventions. By the end of 2006, CDC had field staff in 5 PMI countries, and, by the end of 2007, the agency will have staff in all 15-
In lc
than a year, PMI has provided more than six mil uding indoor residual spraying, bed r and new antimalari; health facilities on o confirmed malaria c nearly 90%—a dire new drugs.
ion people with life-saving as treated with insecticides, I drugs. In fact, in public le of Zanzibar's islands, Lses have dropped by t result of the nets and the
» Malaria Control in War Areas
1950s-Today...
A Half-Century in the Fight Against Polio
In public health terms, the 1950s could be remembered as the decade of polio intervention in the United States. After all, it was in 1950 that a group of CDC scientists conducted the first investigation of a polio outbreak in Ohio. The worst recorded U.S. epidemic of polio occurred in 1952, with more than 57,000 cases reported. By 1955, CDC had established its Polio Surveillance Program. That same year, an inactivated polio vaccine (IPV) was introduced, and the incidence of the disease dramatically decreased, falling 85% from 1955 to 1957. The sharp drop in cases continued after the introduction in 1961 of an oral polio vaccine (OPV). (In 1960, there were a total of 2,525 paralytic cases reported in the U.S.—by 1965, that number had dropped to a mere 61.) The last case of polio caused by a wild poliovirus (rather than an importation) in the U.S. was in 1979.
In 1988, based on success in controlling transmission in the U.S. and throughout the Americas, the World Health Assembly voted to launch an initiative to eradicate polio worldwide. CDC—along with the World Health Organization, Rotary International, and UNICEF—is a spearheading partner in this initiative. That year, an estimated 350,000 cases of paralytic polio occurred in 125 countries. By 2005, cases had fallen by more than 99%, with fewer than 2,000 reported globally, and only four countries—Nigeria, India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan—remained endemic for the disease. Since the initiative began, more than five million cases of paralytic polio have been prevented and an estimated 250,000 polio deaths averted.
There is still difficulty today in accessing all children for vaccination in areas of insecurity; and outbreaks have occurred in previously polio-free countries due to imported cases. To combat this, new tools and strategies are being implemented: when an outbreak occurs, an immunization response is conducted within four weeks of case confirmation; three immunization campaigns are held four to six weeks apart; and a house-to-house immunization strategy is used. In addition, t OPY which is more efficient at boosting immunity against specific of poliovirus than the trivalent vaccine, has been reintroduced in numerou :e 2005. Disease surveillance has been strengthened, and targeted advocacv has been conducted at the global, national, and district levels.
Key to achievement of a polio-free world is the continued support of the international polio partnership. After 50 years, CDC remains fully committed t the fight.
Communicable Disease Center
Artistic Rendering 1959
1960s-Today...
40 Years of Research on Tobacco and Smoking
In 1964, a sea change occurred in American culture when the Surgeon General released the first-ever report linking smoking to lung cancer. To a nation accustomed to seeing smoking on television and permitting it on airplanes, in home and around children, the report's statement that "cigarette smoking is a health hazard of sufficient importance in the United States to warrant appropriate remedial action" marked a shift in attitude that continues to shape national discourse to this day. Some 22 years later, in 1986, another groundbreaking report would examine the health impact of secondhand smoke ("involuntary smoking")—an aspect of the debate largely under-examined previously.
It was fitting then that 20 years later, on June 2006, the Surgeon General again advanced the discussion on smoking and public health with the release of the 29th report devoted to tobacco and health. The Health Consequences of Involuntary Exposure to Tobacco Smoke documents, beyond any doubt, that secondhand smoke harms people's health and reaffirms, updates, and expands on the conclusions of the 1986 Report. CDC is responsible for these reports as well as for having supported highly successful state and community programs, dissemination of research findings, and ensuring the continued public visibility of antismoking messages.
The Report is already havii definitive and powerful cor and breathing even a little < sed action to reduce i e the tob
I far-reaching effects on the i lusions—for example, there condhand smoke can be dar voluntary exposure to tobac
is public health. Its safe level of exposure js—will set the stage for Loke, saving lives and
ted burden on the public's health in the pre
Here are just a few examples of healthy changes that ha\ »   Marriott Corporation goes smoke-free
»   Lockheed Martin Corporation announces tobacco-free campus policy »   Nation's Restaurant News suggests that restaurants reconsider smoking polic »   Pennsylvania Restaurant Association declares support for state smoke-free
»  Anchorage and Kansas City Chambers of Commerce support local smoke-
free » Hav
CDC is proud to have been one of the first HHS agen free campus policy, even before this most recent Repoi
se and Kansas City Chambers of Commerce support li nd Louisiana governors sign state smoke-free laws
■ impler issued.
1980s-Today
25 Years of HIV/AIDS
Since June 1981, when CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report published a report of Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia in five previously healthy young men in Los Angeles, CDC has continued the battle against this disease. Today, there are more than 1 million persons living with HIV/AIDS in the United States, but ove the last 25 years, CDC has succeeded in
hild (pi
I ,1
Decreasing mother-to-i the early- to mid-1990: multiple interventions, includi women, the use of rapid HIV status, and the use of pregnancy and by inft
Ensuri infectii
HIV transmission from 1,650 during :d cases in 2005; attributable to
untary HIV testing of pregnant at delivery for women of unknown HIV therapy by HIV-infected women during
bility and use of diagi .mote individual kno,
s for HIV s and to ens
1970s-Today...
Three Decades of Reducing Lead Levels
Today it is accepted and behavioral problem: adults. But in 1972, thi something few had ever
.ong children and hypertension and kidney disease in tion that lead could constitute a public health threat was sidered. Even the National Academy of Sciences report
from that year ambi
:d, "lead attribui has no know
ible
r harmful effec
nd dispersion ii
o the
That same year, however, CDC research would dramatically alter the discussion. And, in 1973, CDC published its findings on harmful levels of lead exposure and health consequences in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. Not only were populations living near industrial areas or in dense urban areas being impacted by air lead levels, but deteriorated lead paint in older homes and apartment buildings was also a serious problem. This changed forever the way in which Americans viewed "acceptable levels" of lead exposure.
Over the next 34 years, blood lead the United States with the impli lead exposure. CDC played a maji drinking water conduits, and othe in housing and in making older hi followed is one of the most signifii
declined d ffeder: educm, n bann
ing lead-safe. Thi t public health
:lly; approximately 80% ii
id exposure from food cans, lead-based paints for
cr, blood lead levels are still high today ft minority groups, children from low-income fam homes. According to data collected during 1999-2002, I children remained at higher risk for elevated blood lead k white or Mexican American children. The most recent fi: that approximately 24 million housing units s hazards, with 1.2 million of these units occupied by including perhaps 310,000 young children.
of n
popula id those 1
ixposure that t decades.
n-Hispal :1s than l
in older c black non-Hispani, lable indicate ú lead paint
CDC has joined with other federal and eliminate childhood lead pi interagency strategy will help to idi
to ensure a systematic effort to conti public health problem by 2010. Thi fy lead paint hazards as w id
elevated blood lead levels, tc	monitor progress	I, reducing 1=.
the success of prevention pr	ograms. Striving to	meet the goal
30 years ago, CDC also isle	ading the way in i	ternarionalagr
of leaded gasoline and lesser	health effects in a	teas where lead
the safety of thi risk for HIV d.
blood supply. Today, with ■d at as lov
Increasing widespread promotion of HIV testing and uptake have resulted in approximately 50% of persons aged 15 to 44 years in the U.S. reporting that they have had an HIV test, including a higher proportion of those at sed risk (e.g., men who have sex with men and injection-drug users).
Today, CDC continues to confron States, to reduce the number of the United States who are unaware of thi messages on both HIV-positive and i
:ding cause of illness and death in the United ■d 250,000 HIV-infected persons in the is; and to increasingly focus prevention persons, and reduce health disparities,
especially among African Americans and other high-risk populations. In 2006, CDC published groundbreaking new recommendations to make voluntary HIV screening a routine part of medical care for all patients aged 13 to 64 years and to simplify the testing process in health care settings and increase early diagnosis. The
:nd further reduce mother-to-child HIV ti