Podcasts: Portable Health and Safety Information for a Digital World

Are you planning international travel and wondering if you need a shot? Do you monitor your child's – and your own – health? Are you a pet owner, physician, sports fan, teacher, or public health administrator? If you answered yes to any of these questions, then you might be interested in listening to or viewing a CDC podcast.

Podcasts are audio or video files that you can download "on demand" from the Internet and listen to or view at any time, on a computer or personal MP3 device. Despite the name similarity to Apple Computer's iPod^®, a podcast listener does not have to own an iPod. You can listen or view a podcast using any portable digital audio/video player or any PC or Mac that has digital audio/video player software. CDC creates podcasts on health and safety topics for the general public, as well as some targeted to health care professionals and the clinical community. Recent CDC podcast titles include:

• Get Children Vaccinated for Influenza

• 2007-2008 Influenza Vaccine Production and Distribution

• Kids Teaching Kids...Clean Hands Save Lives!

• Heads Up! Concussion Information for Physicians

• Climate Change: Science, Health, and the Environment

• HIV/AIDS Prevention among Women

• CDC Travel Health Tips for Students Studying Abroad

• CDC's Response in Darfur

The flexibility of podcasts makes them popular. You can access the information whenever you choose, save it to your computer and player, even forward the file to a friend or colleague. In the year that CDC has offered podcasts, the most popular downloads have been:

• Violence on the Job

• History of Bioterrorism

• Workplace Stress

• Vaccines: Guidelines for Healthcare Providers

• STD Treatment Guidelines 2006

To review all of the podcasts created or hosted by CDC, visit the podcast Web page.

Subscribe to Podcasts via RSS Feed

You can automatically receive new programs without having to go to CDC's Web page to download them. After you subscribe, you automatically receive a list of updates via the RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feed. You may choose to have new audio/video files automatically saved to your computer and digital player. For details, see RSS Feeds and RSS Help.

Learn More about CDC Podcasts

If you're new to podcasting, see Podcast Help. If you're wired and ready to listen, browse CDC's index of health and safety podcasts.