CDC Facts

At the center of the nation′s public health system, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) protects communities by controlling disease outbreaks; ensuring food and water are safe; preventing leading causes of death such as heart disease, cancer, stroke, and diabetes; and working globally to reduce health threats.

CDC works 24 hours a day, seven days a week saving lives, protecting people, and saving money through prevention.

• CDC connects state and local health across the U.S., recognizing disease patterns and making state responses to health problems more effective
• CDC and its state and local partners are key to homeland security, by maintaining the ability to detect and respond to outbreaks and natural and man–made disasters
• CDC is a key source of evidence for health action – monitoring health, informing clinical and policy decision–making, and providing individuals the information they need to take responsibility for their own health
• CDC supports state and local public health partners with training and guidance to ensure we have nationwide lab capacity for detecting and responding to health threats, and the capacity to save lives by addressing key risk factors for premature death, injury, and disease

 

CDC′s Mission

Promote health and quality of life by preventing and controlling disease, injury, and disability.

CDC Saving Lives

CDC helps save lives from infectious diseases, harmful environmental hazards, injuries, and emergencies by providing emergency response, expertise, public health infrastructure strengthening, vaccine development, guidelines for programs proven to work, and support for strengthening global disease detection.

CDC Protecting People

CDC′s scientists collect and analyze health data, determining how health events affect specific populations. This has produced effective interventions that protect people from scores of public health threats every year. In the past 2 years, CDC conducted more than 750 field investigations in 49 states, 5 U.S. territories, and in at least 35 different countries.

Successes – CDC guidelines to protect hospital patients from infections yielded an 18% drop in certain infections; and CDC′s global work in HIV prevention helped treat 3.2 million people and protected more than 100,000 infants from infection.

CDC Saving Money Through Prevention

Throughout its history, CDC and its public health partners have saved hundreds of thousands of lives and billions of dollars in health costs in the U.S. Since 1981, for example, the U.S. has saved $130 billion and prevented more than 300,000 HIV infections with the $19 billion invested in prevention efforts so far.

Today, the U.S. spends 75% of the total $2.5 trillion in annual health care costs on treating preventable conditions. CDC promotes evidenced–based prevention initiatives as the most effective, common–sense way to improve health and lower health costs. Prevention works in multiple settings – both public and private. Preventing disease will improve the health of all Americans, save money, and improve productivity.

Ongoing Successes – Regular childhood vaccinations prevent 20 million cases of disease, avert 42,000 deaths, and save nearly $70 billion; CDC′s guidelines for preventing infections in health care facilities save 4,500 lives each year and $3.3 billion.

Potential Successes – A 1% reduction in certain chronic risk factors would save $30 billion in medical costs each year; for every dollar spent on workplace wellness programs, businesses could save nearly $3 in absenteeism costs.