CDC at Work: Water, Sanitation, & Environmentally-related Hygiene

Diarrheal diseases are common and largely preventable. Children are at particular risk for diarrhea and other diseases related to poor water, sanitation, and hygiene. A CDC study shows proper hygiene education is a critical step in reducing illness and death from diarrheal disease.

For more information, visit Improving Child Development: A New CDC Handwashing Study Shows Promising Results.

There is evidence that handwashing with soap can reduce respiratory disease incidence overall, but its role for prevention of clinically-confirmed disease is uncertain in resource-poor countries like Bangladesh. CDC and partners work together to measure the associations between handwashing with soap and influenza and pneumonia.

For more information, visit Washing Your Hands: Measuring Factors Associated with Respiratory Disease Prevention through Technology.

Diarrhea and respiratory infections remain leading killers of young children in the developing world, and claim approximately 3.5 million young lives each year. CDC has been studying the role of handwashing in preventing these diseases in developing world settings.

For more information, visit Handwashing in the Developing World.

Protecting patients from the transmission of infectious diseases and from conditions attributable to the care they receive is key to an effective infection prevention and control program. One way CDC’s Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion (DHQP) has worked to protect the health of patients is by the creation of the Hand Hygiene Saves Lives Patient Admission Video.

Today, CDC’s Division of Oral Health in the National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion (NCCDPHP) provides national leadership in water fluoridation practice to state programs.

For more information, visit Division of Oral Health Water Fluoridation Leadership.