Press Releases

To better protect patients, the CDC Foundation received a nearly $1 million grant from Cubist to develop patient safety outcome measures and measurement tools for hospital-based programs dedicated to improving antibiotic use, commonly referred to as antibiotic stewardship programs.

The four-year grant will enable the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), in partnership with the World Health Organization Regional Office for Africa, to build and enhance tobacco use surveillance and research capacity in sub-Saharan Africa, providing nationally representative data to track tobacco use and trends across the region.

To support efforts to stem the epidemic, the CDC Foundation today announced a $1 million donation from Taiwan to provide flexible funding to help meet the most urgent, on-the-ground needs in West Africa. This donation will be used for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Ebola response effort in the most severely affected countries of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

The CDC Foundation, actor Idris Elba and a global team of African soccer stars, international health and aid organizations today announced the launch of Africa United, a global health communications campaign aimed at preventing the spread of Ebola in West Africa.

Dikembe Mutombo has been elected to the board of directors of the CDC Foundation. Mutombo is the chairman and president of the Dikembe Mutombo Foundation, which he established in 1997 to improve the health, education and quality of life for the people in his homeland, the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Douglas Nelson, retired president and CEO of The Annie E. Casey Foundation, has been named chair of the CDC Foundation board.

Phil Kent, former chairman and CEO of Turner Broadcasting Systems, Inc. (TBS, Inc.) has been elected to the board of directors of the CDC Foundation.

A host of needs have been identified to help address the unprecedented Ebola epidemic in West Africa. One vital need is personal protective equipment (PPE) such as gloves, masks and gowns, for use by public health workers and others involved in the on-the-ground response to the epidemic in the most-impacted countries of Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone. To help address this need, the CDC Foundation today announced a public-private partnership with Henry Schein, Inc. and UPS to provide and direct the transport of PPE to West Africa to aid in CDC’s response efforts.

The Ebola epidemic in West Africa is the deadliest in history, taking the lives of more than 4,000 people to date and infecting more than 8,400 individuals in the region. To provide flexible funding to help meet the most urgent on the ground needs, Facebook Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Dr. Priscilla Chan today made a grant of $25 million from their donor-advised fund at Silicon Valley Community Foundation to the CDC Foundation.

Mathuram Santosham, M.D., M.P.H., received the Fries Prize for Improving Health at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for his research and contribution in fighting the deadly Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib) disease.