List of Programs

To characterize the pathogens that cause infections in young infants in developing countries - particularly Bangladesh, Pakistan and India - including a description of incidence, antimicrobial susceptibility and strain properties.

To provide funds for international participants to come to Atlanta to take part in public health courses at CDC or Emory University.

To help CDC teams in Africa and Haiti purchase and distribute insecticide-treated bed nets to protect children and pregnant women from malaria.

To create the Global Adult Tobacco Survey (GATS), a standard global surveillance system to monitor adult tobacco use and critical tobacco control measures, to inform, track and implement national and global programs and policies to reduce tobacco use.

The Bob Keegan Polio Eradication Heroes Fund recognizes health workers and volunteers who have incurred serious injury or lost their lives as a direct consequence of their participation in polio eradication activities. The families of the workers, who have been the victims of automobile crashes, military conflicts and other life-threatening events, receive a certificate recognizing the victim’s heroic commitment to polio eradication and a cash tribute.

To provide an opportunity for third- and fourth-year medical and veterinary students to gain public health experience in an international setting. Hubert fellows spend six to twelve weeks in a developing country working on a priority health problem in conjunction with CDC staff.

To evaluate the blood donor recruitment system, the quality of laboratory screening procedures for blood donations, and the current guidelines for the clinical use of blood components in four countries in central Asia. To identify gaps in blood services, make recommendations to address those gaps, and then implement and evaluate proposed interventions in the problem areas.

CDC employs more than 1,300 staff in 40+ countries around the world. This fund provides financial relief to the families of staff killed or disabled while doing their job.

To evaluate the use of real-time polymerase chain reaction and the Binax NOW® S.pneumoniae immuno-chromatographic test for diagnosis of pneumococcal pneumonia and sepsis in Thailand.

To help CDC evaluate the overall effectiveness and incremental cost-effectiveness of the the diarrheal contorl program of the Programme for Awareness and Elimination of Diarrhoea (PAED) through community-based and health-facilty-based surveys conducted twice annually for three years in Lusaka Province, Zambia.

To estimate the population-based burden, microbiologic etiology and adverse clinical consequences of severe diarrhea among children 0-59 months of age in study sites in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.

To examine the population immune response to both the immunizing antigen and the wild polio virus in an endemic country in order to analyze differences in vaccine response among different geographical regions.

To describe species distribution of Candida spp. causing bloodstream infection and its resistance to at least four antifungal drugs (fluconazole, voriconazole, amphotericin B, caspofungin) and to compare the results with previous studies and between public and private health sectors in South Africa.

To improve access to quality emergency obstetric care and reduce maternal deaths in four pilot regions of Tanzania.

To enable a Pfizer Global Health Fellow to work alongside CDC scientists on assignment in China to improve prevention, detection and control of emerging infectious diseases.

To provide a source of flexible funding to CDC teams working in the field to meet critical or emergency needs that could not easily be met through usual government channels. Since it was created in 1999 by a group of CDC employees and retirees, the fund has provided resources for essential services and equipment such as bullet-proof vests for health workers vaccinating children in war-torn Somalia, meals-ready-to-eat for workers in Sudan, satellite phones, incentives for vaccination campaigns in Mexico and India and training in other countries.

To support CDC's work with international partners to develop and evaluate new tools and strategies to improve access to safe drinking water at a household level.

To analyze blood samples to determine what species of human malaria parasites are present in the specimens as part of an evaluation of a global malaria specimen bank.

To evaluate Saudi Arabia's infectious disease surveillance system, help train local and regional disease detectives and improve the country's capacity to monitor for and respond to infectious disease outbreaks.

To promote the use of flour fortified with iron and folic acid around the world by encouraging the production and marketing of fortified flour.

Reflecting a lifelong commitment to provide safe water around the world, Dr. Eugene Gangarosa and his wife, Rose, established the Gangarosa Endowment for Safe Water in May 2000 to provide an ongoing source of support for CDC's safe water initiatives.

To create, as a component of the Bloomberg Initiative to Reduce Tobacco Use, a standard global surveillance system to monitor adult tobacco use and critical tobacco control measures to inform, track and implement national and global programs and policies to reduce tobacco use.

To expand CDC's capacity to support the development of a WHO Global Hepatitis Program by providing a fellow who will, under guidance from the CDC Medical Officer assigned to WHO,  develop viral hepatitis screening and treatment guidelines and provide expertise on chronic viral hepatitis control at WHO, serve as a resource for viral hepatitis prevention and vaccination activities to WHO regional offices, provide technical support for WHO’s global burden of hepatitis disease project, and develop and support WHO’s Plan of Action for World Hepatitis Day.

To help CDC serve as a Global Reference Laboratory for the rotavirus laboratory network, which provides support to the global rotavirus surveillance network coordinated by the World Health Organization.

To accumulate an extensive, diverse and well-characterized collection of pneumococcal isolates that cause invasive disease and pneumonia, recovered primarily from children in developing countries.

To help CDC serve as a Global Reference Laboratory for the vaccine-preventable invasive bacterial diseases (VPIBD) laboratory network, which provides support to the global VPIBD surveillance network coordinated by the World Health Organization.

To provide technical assistance related to epidemiologic and lab activities for establishing the burden of Hib disease (Haemophilus influenzae type B), documenting the impact of Hib vaccination, and developing and implementing global strategies to address Hib disease.

To help CDC conduct assessments in Kenya to evaluate knowledge, beliefs and acceptability of the HPV vaccine.

To generate evidence-based recommendations via a systematic literature review on how to improve health care providers' performance in low-and middle-income countries.

To test blood and saliva samples from Uganda, Zimbabwe and South Africa for Kaposi sarcoma-associated herpesvirus (KSHV) antibodies and DNA; to measure KSHV seroprevalence and seroincidence; to analyze determinants of KSHV infection; and to examine the response of KSHV infection to antiretroviral therapy.

To support CDC’s Center for Global Health on a five-year public-private partnership between BD and PEPFAR focused on improving overall laboratory systems and services in Uganda, Ethiopia, Kenya, Mozambique and India, countries severely affected by HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis.

When a terrorist bomb exploded at the American Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya on August 7, 1998, Mary Louise Martin was among the 12 Americans and more than 200 Kenyans killed. In her memory, friends and colleagues established the Louise Martin, D.V.M., M.S., EIS '85 Memorial Scholarship Endowment to provide scholarships for disadvantaged young women in Kenya to attend a national school.

To encourage transdisciplinary collaboration and build a research field that identifies environmental factors and public and private policies that have the potential to influence physical activity and sedentary behavior.

To focus on the integration of colorectal cancer screening with other chronic disease programs that provide screening and diagnostic services to U.S. adults.

To provide up to three Distinguished Alcohol Research Fellows to help CDC improve public health surveillance on excessive alcohol use by conducting applied public health research, supporting state and local public health capacity in alcohol epidemiology, and supporting the translation of Community Guide recommendations for the prevention of excessive drinking into public health practice.

To identify ongoing interventions aimed at reducing childhood obesity that successfully reduce children's body mass indices.

To help CDC's Newborn Screening Branch collaborate with California's newborn screening program through the ongoing Early Childhood Mortality Collaborative Project.

To facilitate a collaboration between CDC and the Kellogg Foundation to assess the potential impact of Kellogg-supported interventions through the use of CDC's Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System (PRAMS). PRAMS collects state-specific, population-based data on maternal attitudes and experiences before, during, and shortly after pregnancy. 

To help CDC provide reference and quality control materials for laboratory collaboration, including collaborations for the Hormone Measurement Standardization program.

To improve four major areas of newborn screening: 1) developing new screening methods for specific diseases, 2) integrating state public health laboratories in the translation process through collaborative field studies, 3) expanding the global reach of newborn screening, and 4) adapting innovative technologies for screening and quality assurance.

To develop and implement a survey of medical students assessing their knowledge of antimicrobial use and resistance as well as their perceptions of how much education they are getting to prescribe antimicrobials wisely.

To demonstrate the efficacy of an antimicrobial stewardship project in long-term care facilities using the syndromic approach targeting urinary tract infections.

To describe the MIC, MEC and prevalence of resistance to echinocandin drugs among a large collection of Aspergillus isolates and to compare these resistance patterns to previous reports.

To support the Birth-Cohort Evaluation to Advance Screening and Testing for Hepatitis C (BEST-C) project, a two-year study that will evaluate the effectiveness of screening all persons born from 1945 to 1965  for Hepatitis C (HCV) in order to increase the proportion of people who are aware of their HCV status.

To increase CDC's capacity to better understand the cost-effectiveness of the different screening, treatment and care options that are now available for persons living with viral hepatitis.

To establish the first comprehensive U.S. longitudinal observational cohort of 15,000 or more patients with chronic viral hepatitis B and C in order to improve understanding of chronic viral hepatitis and the impact of screening, care and treatment recommendations.

To identify groups at high risk of Clostridium difficile infection (CDI) to be targeted for vaccine using two potential vaccination scenarios in order to create a CDI risk index and identify surrogates for inpatient antibiotic exposure. This study will use hospital administrative data, hospital pharmacy data and CDI data from hospitalized patients at two large academic centers participating in the Emerging Infections Program (EIP).

To develop strategies to control cytomegalovirus (CMV) congenital infection, which affects as many as 10,000 children per year in the U.S.

To help CDC collaborate with the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the National Institute of Food and Agriculture to create an integrated, multi-disciplinary approach to developing improved tools, skills and capacity to study foodborne viruses. Outcomes of the partnership will be used to systematically identify risk factors and develope risk management strategies to reduce contamination in pre- and post-harvest environments.

To create a multidisciplinary research activity that will improve basic knowledge of Crimean Congo Hemorrhagic Fever virus biology, pathogenesis, vaccine development, and therapeutic and integrated control measures.

To develop a genetically stable inactivated poliovirus vaccine.

To measure the effects of monochromatic ultraviolet light on viral specimens.

To provide synthetic peptides for a study on epithelial cell proliferation.

To help CDC conduct bench tests to evaluate the effect of Disposable-syringe jet injectors on measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine stability. The work is part of the larger Disposable Syringe Jet Injector project, which is led by PATH and supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

To evaluate whether two novel, candidate human anti-RSV G monoclonal antibodies have the ability to reduce or attenuate disease pathogenesis in the mouse model for acute RSV infection.

To evaluate the effect of meningococcal conjugate vaccine on "herd immunity" in adolescent communities.

To increase collaboration across the country and across relevant areas of expertise to reduce foodborne illness in the United States.

To support the CDC's national campaign to promote discriminating use of antimicrobial agents. The campaign seeks to change behavior that leads to overuse of antimicrobial agents in adult and pediatric patients.

To estimate incidence rates of gastroenteritis due to norovirus by age and country/WHO region, taking; to describe and quantify the available data on health effects resulting from these infections; to estimate the proportion of norovirus that is foodborne; and to provide a critical appraisal of data gaps.

To enable CDC to provide technical and alaytical expertise in HPV genotyping and immune response measurements to academic and other partners in need of these assays to advance public health objectives related to HPV vaccine impact monitoring and HPV epidemiology.

To enable CDC to apply its Immuno-colorimetric neutralization assay (ICNA) to a population-based study to identify critical determinants of immunity to rubella. ICNA was developed by CDC's Measles, Mumps, Rubella and Herpes virus Laboratory. It detects and quantifies rubella neutralizing antibodies, which are considered correlates of humoral protection.

To improve the understanding of the human immune response and genetic factors associated with norovirus (NoV) infection as well as viral load and level of immunity against subsequent NoV outbreaks. CDC will collaborate with the State Public Health Division, affiliated local health departments and long-term care facilities in this study.

To compare the immunogenicity of current vaccines for pneumococcal disease (native pneumococcal polysaccharide vaccine) with a proposed new vaccination method (microsphere entrapped pneumococcal capsular polysaccharides delivered either subcutaneously or intranasally).

To provide laboratory support for the development of a more thermostatable measles vaccine.

To help CDC study how community-based organizations adapt evidence-based interventions and whether or not those adaptations make the programs more or less effective. The initial study will focus on violence prevention programs, but researchers at CDC believe the outcomes of the research will be relevant to other public health issues and programs.

To develop a research agenda to address the causes and prevention of gun violence. To meet our goal, CDC is requesting the Institute of Medicine, through the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) and in collaboration with the National Research Council, to appoint an Advisory Committee to develop the proposed research agenda, using established NAS procedures. The proposed agenda will identify the most critical research questions that can be answered in the short-term (3-5 years) to improve our knowledge of the following: I) causes of gun violence; 2) interventions that prevent gun violence; and 3) strategies to minimize the public health burden of gun violence.

To create a 45-minute interactive training course for healthcare professionals on concussion diagnosis and management, and to help CDC launch the Heads Up for Parents education campaign. The training for healthcare professionals and the education campaign for parents are part of CDC's larger Heads Up: Concussion in Youth Sports initiative that provides information on preventing, recognizing and responding to concussions to coaches, parents and athletes involved in youth sports.

To test whether technology, such as cell phones, Web-based learning and virtual reality software can be used to improve child abuse and maltreatment prevention programs.

To help CDC's Division of Violence Prevention award grants to state domestic violence coalitions to help them incorporate primary prevention strategies into their overall domestic violence programming

To help CDC's Division of Violence Prevention launch the Positive Parenting Program (Triple P) model through partnerships between Federally Qualified Health Centers and local public health agencies.

To explore the risk of breast cancer from exposure to acrylamide in a case control study of postmenopausal women with and without breast cancer.

To assess exposure to acrylamide in a subset of the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC) study cohort and assess possible associations between acrylamide exposure and endometrial and ovarian cancers.

To quantify exposure to secondhand smoke by measuring levels of nicotine metabolites and then assess the relationship between secondhand smoke exposure and the development of asthma and allergy in children.

To test whether fetal exposure to sufficiently high levels of maternal antibodies could lead to the development of autism spectrum disorders.

To evaluate the lifestyle and demographic factors that contribute to the levels of polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) in human milk.

To measure the levels of gamma-tocopherols, 25-hydroxyvitamine, pesticides and blood lead and study their association with the development of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS or Lou Gehrig's disease).

To provide confirmation of previous laboratory results (by a lab other than CDC) for several organic chemicals from a minority population of children and adolescents residing in a highly agricultural region of Texas located in close proximity to two EPA-designated Superfund sites.

To assist the New South Wales Environment Protection Authority in determining whether workers have been exposed to dioxins, furans, PCBs and/or organochlorine pesticides during road construction and to establish, if possible, the cause of ongoing health effects suffered by the workers on the construction site.

To measure the levels of polybrominated diphenyl ethers, polychlorinated biphenyls and persistent pesticides in maternal serum and study the association with risk of autism.

To determine folate status across the U.K. in order to establish a population baseline should mandatory folic acid fortification proceed.

To assess the potential exposure to heavy metals and metalloids in people living near an open pit copper mine in the Andes Mountains of Cusco, Peru. CDC plans to analyze urine samples from two communities of people living in the area. Previous environmental sampling has revealed heavy concentrations of elements in different samples of river sediments in communities near the mine.

To conduct follow-up testing of Freeport, Texas residents previously identified with high urinary nickel concentrations to determine if ongoing exposure to this metal is occurring. Prior screenings, conducted by Texas Department of State Health Services, revealed a large number of people had nickel levels higher than normal when urine samples were tested for cobalt, molybdenum and nickel. This public health investigation is being conducted under Texas Health and Safety Code Section 161.0211, Epidemiologic or Toxicologic Investigations.

To evaluate whether exposure to PAHs during pregnancy adversely affects fetal development, asthma development and child health.

The Emergency Response Fund helps CDC respond to public health emergencies and, when needed, allows CDC experts on the frontlines of an emergency to immediately purchase the specialized equipment or services needed to get the job done.

To provide immediate, flexible resources to CDC experts, when their help is requested by health officials in another country to address a public health emergency - whether a natural disaster like the tsunami in Southeast Asia or the earthquake in Haiti or an emerging disease outbreak like SARS or H1N1.

The Meta-Leadership Summit for Preparedness is a unique national initiative to better prepare business, government and nonprofit leaders to work effectively together during a public health or safety crisis. Through the Summit, leaders learn skills needed for effective action during times of crisis and build organizational connections to strengthen community preparedness for responding to and recovering from emergencies.

To evaluate a new workplace safety program at a helicopter manufacturing facility to reduce work-related musculoskeletal and traumatic injuries.

To investigate the potential relationship between occupational exposure to pesticides and the development of Parkinson’s disease.   

To measure polybrominated biphenyls (PBBs) and determine the extent of endocrine disruption resulting from exposure to these compounds.

To educate students attending Historically Black Colleges & Universities (HBCU) about career opportunities within CDC by offering on-site workshops and meetings, internships and a student CDC Ambassador program.

The CDC Foundation Hero Award recognizes an individual who has made a significant contribution to improving the public’s health through exemplary work in advancing CDC’s mission of promoting health and quality of life by preventing and controlling disease, injury and disability.

To provide an opportunity for third- and fourth-year medical and veterinary students to gain public health experience in an international setting. Hubert fellows spend six to twelve weeks in a developing country working on a priority health problem in conjunction with CDC staff.

The David J. Sencer CDC Museum serves as CDC’s gateway to the public, and is dedicated to comprehensive scientific learning and outreach. Composed of innovative permanent exhibits representing the breadth of CDC’s work and history, topical changing exhibits, a theater and a classroom, this facility serves to educate all who visit about public health and the important work of CDC, with a special emphasis on curriculum-based educational workshops and camps targeting middle- and high-school students.

To provide travel scholarships to potential EIS applicants to attend the EIS Conference.

To recognize the best collaborative work between epidemiology and laboratory scientists presented at the annual EIS Conference.

To honor an EIS officer or recent graduate (within five years) for contributions to vaccine-preventable diseases.