Agency of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, headquartered in Atlanta, whose mission is "to promote health and quality of life by preventing and controlling disease, injury, and disability.
" Part of the Public Health Service, it was founded in 1946 as the Communicable Disease Center to fight malaria and other contagious diseases. As its scope widened to polio, smallpox, and disease surveillance, the name was changed to the Center for Disease Control and later pluralized. It now subsumes health statistics, infectious diseases, and environmental health; a National Immunization Program; and an Office on Smoking and Health. It consolidates disease-control data, health promotion, and public health programs, and it provides grants for studies and programs, health information to health care professionals and the public, and publications on epidemiology. Today it is regarded as perhaps the world's foremost epidemiological centre.