Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia, is recognized as the leading United States agency for protecting the public health and safety of people. The CDC provides credible information to enhance health decisions and promotes health through strong 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, health promotion and education activities designed to improve the health of the people of the United States.

The CDC Centers include:

National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities [1]
National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion [2]
National Center for Environmental Health [3]
National Center for Health Marketing
National Center for Health Statistics
National Center for HIV, STD, and TB Prevention
National Center for Infectious Diseases [4]
National Center for Injury Prevention and Control
National Center for Public Health Informatics [5]
National Immunization Program [6]
National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health

Headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, the CDC is an agency of the Department of Health and Human Services. Previously known as the Communicable Disease Center until 1946 and as the Center for Disease Control until 1970, the agency was founded in 1946 to help control malaria. The CDC has remained at the forefront of public health efforts to prevent and control infectious and chronic diseases, injuries, workplace hazards, disabilities, and environmental health threats.

1 Goals
2 Workforce
3 Additional information
4 External links

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Goals

The CDC states that it has two primary health protection goals:

Health promotion and prevention of disease, injury, and disability: All people, especially those at higher risk due to health disparities, will achieve their optimal lifespan with the best possible quality of health in every stage of life.
Preparedness: People in all communities will be protected from infectious, occupational, environmental, and terrorist threats.

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Workforce

The workforce at CDC/ATSDR totals more than 9,000 employees in 170 occupations with a public health focus, including physicians, statisticians, epidemiologists, laboratory experts, behavioral scientists, and health communicators.

Although its national headquarters is in Atlanta, more than 3,000 CDC employees work at other locations throughout the United States. Additional CDC staff are deployed to countries around the globe, assigned to almost all state health departments, and dispersed to numerous local health agencies on both long- and short-term assignments.

The CDC campus in Atlanta houses facilities for the research of extremely dangerous biological agents, in a setting well represented in the Dustin Hoffman film Outbreak although the actual location depicted in the film was supposed to be the Army's USAMRIID bio-research facility.

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