Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (redirected from Communicable Disease Center)

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), agency of the U.S. Public Health Service since 1973, with headquarters in Atlanta; it was established in 1946 as the Communicable Disease Center. The CDC is the federal agency responsible for administering national programs for the prevention and control of communicable and vector-borne diseases and for developing and implementing programs for dealing with environmental health problems. It also directs quarantine activities and conducts epidemiological research, and it provides consultation on an international basis for the control of preventable diseases. The 11 centers, institutes, and offices of the agency include the centers for chronic disease prevention and health promotion, environmental health, health statistics, infectious diseases, injury prevention and control, immunizations, and occupational safety and health.

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Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)

Agency of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, headquartered in Atlanta, whose mission is “to promote health and quality of life by preventing and controlling disease, injury, and disability.” Part of the Public Health Service, it was founded in 1946 as the Communicable Disease Center to fight malaria and other contagious diseases. As its scope widened to polio, smallpox, and disease surveillance, the name was changed to the Center for Disease Control and later pluralized. It now subsumes health statistics, infectious diseases, and environmental health; a National Immunization Program; and an Office on Smoking and Health. It consolidates disease-control data, health promotion, and public health programs, and it provides grants for studies and programs, health information to health care professionals and the public, and publications on epidemiology. Today it is regarded as perhaps the world's foremost epidemiological centre.