Establishment The
Communicable Disease Center was founded July 1, 1946, as the successor to the
World War II Malaria Control in War Areas program of the Office of National Defense Malaria Control Activities. Preceding its founding, organizations with global influence in
malaria control were the Malaria Commission of the
League of Nations and the
Rockefeller Foundation. The Rockefeller Foundation greatly supported malaria control, The new agency was a branch of the
U.S. Public Health Service and Atlanta was chosen as the location because
malaria was endemic in the Southern United States. The agency changed names before adopting the name
Communicable Disease Center in 1946. Offices were located on the sixth floor of the Volunteer Building on Peachtree Street. With a budget at the time of about $1million, 59 percent of its personnel were engaged in
mosquito abatement and habitat control with the objective of
control and eradication of malaria in the United States. Among its 369 employees, the main jobs at CDC were originally
entomology and engineering. In CDC's initial years, more than six and a half million homes were sprayed, mostly with
DDT. In 1946, there were only seven medical officers on duty and an early organization chart was drawn. Under
Joseph Walter Mountin, the CDC continued to be an advocate for public health issues and pushed to extend its responsibilities to many other
communicable diseases. In 1947, the CDC made a token payment of $10 to
Emory University for of land on Clifton Road in DeKalb County, still the home of CDC headquarters as of 2025. CDC employees collected the money to make the purchase. The benefactor behind the "gift" was
Robert W. Woodruff,
chairman of the board of the
Coca-Cola Company. Woodruff had a long-time interest in
malaria control, which had been a problem in areas where he went hunting. The same year, the PHS transferred its San Francisco based plague laboratory into the CDC as the Epidemiology Division, and a new Veterinary Diseases Division was established. In the study, which lasted from 1932 to 1972, a group of Black men (nearly 400 of whom had syphilis) were studied to learn more about the disease. The disease was left untreated in the men, who had not given their
informed consent to serve as research subjects. In 2020, FETP celebrated the 40th anniversary of the CDC's support for Thailand's Field Epidemiology Training Program. Thailand was the first FETP site created outside of North America and is found in numerous countries, reflecting CDC's influence in promoting this model internationally. The Training Programs in Epidemiology and Public Health Interventions Network (
TEPHINET) has graduated 950 students. The mission of the CDC expanded beyond its original focus on malaria to include
sexually transmitted diseases when the Venereal Disease Division of the U.S. Public Health Service (PHS) was transferred to the CDC in 1957. Shortly thereafter, Tuberculosis Control was transferred (in 1960) to the CDC from PHS, and then in 1963 the Immunization program was established. It became the
National Communicable Disease Center effective July 1, 1967, and the
Center for Disease Control on June 24, 1970. At the end of the
Public Health Service reorganizations of 1966–1973, it was promoted to being a principal operating agency of PHS. An act of the
United States Congress appended the words "and Prevention" to the name effective October 27, 1992. However, Congress directed that the initialism CDC be retained because of its name recognition. Since the 1990s, the CDC focus has broadened to include
chronic diseases,
disabilities, injury control,
workplace hazards,
environmental health threats, and terrorism preparedness. CDC combats emerging diseases and other health risks, including
birth defects,
West Nile virus,
obesity,
avian,
swine, and
pandemic flu,
E. coli, and
bioterrorism, to name a few. The organization would also prove to be an important factor in preventing the abuse of
penicillin. In May 1994 the CDC admitted having sent samples of communicable diseases to the Iraqi government from 1984 through 1989 which were subsequently repurposed for biological warfare, including
Botulinum toxin,
West Nile virus,
Yersinia pestis and
Dengue fever virus. In 1992,
Mark L. Rosenberg and five CDC colleagues founded the CDC's National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, with an annual budget of approximately $260,000. They focused on "identifying causes of firearm deaths, and methods to prevent them". Their first report, published in the
New England Journal of Medicine in 1993 entitled "Guns are a Risk Factor for Homicide in the Home", reported "mere presence of a gun in a home increased the risk of a firearm-related death by 2.7 percent, and suicide fivefolda "huge" increase". Advocates for
gun control opposed the amendment and continued to try to overturn it after it was passed. In 1997, "Congress re-directed all of the money for gun research to the study of traumatic brain injury." advocated for firearms research. She established four coordinating centers. In 2009 the
Obama administration re-evaluated this change and ordered them cut as an unnecessary management layer. On May 16, 2011, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's blog
published an article instructing the public on what to do to prepare for a
zombie invasion. While the article did not claim that such a scenario was possible, it did use the popular culture appeal as a means of urging citizens to prepare for all potential hazards, such as earthquakes, tornadoes, and floods. According to David Daigle, the associate director for communications, public health preparedness and response, the idea arose when his team was discussing their upcoming hurricane-information campaign and Daigle mused that "we say pretty much the same things every year, in the same way, and I just wonder how many people are paying attention." A social-media employee mentioned that the subject of zombies had come up a lot on
Twitter when she had been tweeting about the
Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster and
radiation. The team realized that a campaign like this would most likely reach a different audience from the one that normally pays attention to hurricane-preparedness warnings and went to work on the zombie campaign, launching it right before hurricane season began. "The whole idea was, if you're prepared for a zombie apocalypse, you're prepared for pretty much anything," said Daigle. Once the blog article was posted, the CDC announced an open contest for
YouTube submissions of the most creative and effective videos covering preparedness for a
zombie apocalypse (or apocalypse of any kind), to be judged by the "CDC Zombie Task Force". Submissions were open until October 11, 2011. They also released a zombie-themed graphic novella available on their website. Zombie-themed educational materials for teachers are available on the site. In 2013, the
American Medical Association, the
American Psychological Association, and the
American Academy of Pediatrics sent a letter to the leaders of the Senate Appropriations Committee asking them "to support at least $10million within the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in FY 2014 along with sufficient new taxes at the National Institutes of Health to support research into the causes and prevention of violence. Furthermore, we urge Members to oppose any efforts to reduce, eliminate, or condition CDC funding related to violence prevention research." Congress maintained the ban in subsequent budgets. They included one of only two official repositories of
smallpox in the world, with the other one located at the
State Research Center of Virology and Biotechnology VECTOR in the Russian Federation. In 2014, the CDC revealed they had discovered several misplaced smallpox samples while their lab workers were "potentially infected" with
anthrax. The city of Atlanta annexed the property of the CDC headquarters effective January 1, 2018, as a part of the city's largest annexation within a period of 65 years; the
Atlanta City Council had voted to do so the prior December. The headquarters were located in an
unincorporated area, statistically in the
Druid Hills census-designated place.
COVID-19 The CDC has been widely criticized for its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2022, CDC director
Rochelle Walensky acknowledged "some pretty dramatic, pretty public mistakes, from testing to data to communications", based on the findings of an internal examination. The first confirmed case of
COVID-19 was discovered in the U.S. on January 20, 2020. However, widespread COVID-19 testing in the United States was effectively stalled until February 28, when federal officials revised a faulty CDC test, and days afterward, when the
Food and Drug Administration began loosening rules that had restricted other labs from developing tests. In February 2020, as the CDC's early
coronavirus test malfunctioned nationwide, CDC Director
Robert R. Redfield reassured fellow officials on the
White House Coronavirus Task Force that the problem would be quickly solved, according to White House officials. It took about three weeks to sort out the failed test kits, which may have been contaminated during their processing in a CDC lab. Later investigations by the FDA and the
Department of Health and Human Services found that the CDC had violated its own protocols in developing its tests. In November 2020,
NPR reported that an internal review document they obtained revealed that the CDC was aware that the first batch of tests which were issued in early January had a chance of being wrong 33 percent of the time, but they released them anyway. In May 2020,
The Atlantic reported that the CDC was conflating the results of two different types of coronavirus tests – tests that diagnose current coronavirus infections, and tests that measure whether someone has ever had the virus. The magazine said this distorted several important metrics, provided the country with an inaccurate picture of the state of the pandemic, and overstated the country's testing ability. In July 2020, the Trump administration ordered hospitals to bypass the CDC and instead send all COVID-19 patient information to a database at the
Department of Health and Human Services. Some health experts opposed the order and warned that the data might become politicized or withheld from the public. On July 15, the CDC alarmed health care groups by temporarily removing COVID-19 dashboards from its website. It restored the data a day later. In August 2020, the CDC recommended that people showing no COVID-19 symptoms do not need testing. The new guidelines alarmed many public health experts. The guidelines were crafted by the
White House Coronavirus Task Force without the sign-off of
Anthony Fauci of the NIH. Objections by other experts at the CDC went unheard. Officials said that a CDC document in July arguing for "the importance of reopening schools" was also crafted outside the CDC. On August 16, the chief of staff, Kyle McGowan, and his deputy, Amanda Campbell, resigned from the agency. The testing guidelines were reversed on September 18, 2020, after public controversy. In September 2020, the CDC drafted an order requiring masks on all public transportation in the United States, but the White House Coronavirus Task Force blocked the order, refusing to discuss it, according to two federal health officials. In October 2020, it was disclosed that White House advisers had repeatedly altered the writings of CDC scientists about COVID-19, including recommendations on church choirs, social distancing in bars and restaurants, and summaries of public-health reports. In the lead up to 2020
Thanksgiving, the CDC advised Americans not to travel for the holiday saying, "It's not a requirement. It's a recommendation for the American public to consider." The White House coronavirus task force had its first public briefing in months on that date but travel was not mentioned. The New York Times later concluded that the CDC's decisions to "ben[d] to political pressure from the Trump White House to alter key public health guidance or withhold it from the public [...] cost it a measure of public trust that experts say it still has not recaptured" as of 2022. In December 2021, following a request from the CEO of
Delta Air Lines, CDC shortened its recommended isolation period for asymptomatic individuals infected with COVID-19 from 10 days to five. Until 2022, the CDC withheld critical data about COVID-19 vaccine boosters, hospitalizations and wastewater data. On June 10, 2022, the Biden Administration ordered the CDC to remove the COVID-19 testing requirement for air travelers entering the United States.
Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report modifications During the pandemic, the CDC
Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) came under pressure from political appointees at the
Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to modify its reporting so as not to conflict with what Trump was saying about the pandemic. Starting in June 2020,
Michael Caputo, the HHS assistant secretary for public affairs, and his chief advisor
Paul Alexander tried to delay, suppress, change, and retroactively edit MMR releases about the effectiveness of potential treatments for COVID-19, the transmissibility of the virus, and other issues where the president had taken a public stance. Caputo claimed this oversight was necessary because MMWR reports were being tainted by "political content"; he demanded to know the political leanings of the scientists who reported that
hydroxychloroquine had little benefit as a treatment while Trump was saying the opposite. In October 2020, emails obtained by
Politico showed that Alexander requested multiple alterations in a report. The published alterations included a title being changed from "Children, Adolescents, and Young Adults" to "Persons." One current and two former CDC officials who reviewed the email exchanges said they were troubled by the "intervention to alter scientific reports viewed as untouchable prior to the Trump administration" that "appeared to minimize the risks of the coronavirus to children by making the report's focus on children less clear."
Trust in the CDC after COVID-19 A poll conducted in September 2020 found that nearly 8 in 10 Americans trusted the CDC, a decrease from 87 percent in April 2020. Another poll showed an even larger drop in trust with the results dropping 16 percentage points. By January 2022, according to an
NBC News poll, only 44% of Americans trusted the CDC compared to 69% at the beginning of the pandemic. As the trustworthiness eroded, so too did the information it disseminates. In addition,
Mark Rosenberg, the first director of CDC's
National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, also questioned Redfield's leadership and his lack of defense of the science. Politicization of the agency has continued into the Biden administration as COVID-19 guidance is contradicted by State guidance and the agency is criticized as "CDC's credibility is eroding". In 2021, the CDC, then under the leadership of the Biden administration, received criticism for its mixed messaging surrounding COVID-19 vaccines,
mask-wearing guidance, and the state of the pandemic. On August 17, 2022, Walensky said the CDC would make drastic changes in the wake of mistakes during the COVID-19 pandemic. She outlined an overhaul of how the CDC would analyze and share data and how they would communicate information to the general public. In her statement to all CDC employees, she said: "For 75 years, CDC and public health have been preparing for COVID-19, and in our big moment, our performance did not reliably meet expectations." Based on the findings of an internal report, Walensky concluded that "The CDC must refocus itself on public health needs, respond much faster to emergencies and outbreaks of disease, and provide information in a way that ordinary people and state and local health authorities can understand and put to use" (as summarized by the New York Times). Around January 31, 2025, several CDC websites, pages, and datasets related to HIV and STI prevention, LGBT and youth health
became unavailable for viewing after the agency was ordered to comply with
Donald Trump's executive order to remove all material of "diversity, equity, and inclusion" and "gender identity". Also in January 2025, due to a pause in communications imposed by the second Trump administration at federal health agencies, publication of the
Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) was halted, the first time that had happened since its inception in 1960. The president of the
Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) called the pause in publication a "disaster." Attempts to halt publication had been made by the first Trump administration after MMWR published information about COVID-19 that "conflicted with messaging from the White House." The pause in communications also caused the cancellation of a meeting between the CDC and IDSA about threats to public health regarding the
H5N1 influenza virus. On February 1, 2025, the CDC ordered its scientists to retract any not yet published research they had produced which included any of the following banned terms: "
Gender, transgender, pregnant person, pregnant people, LGBT, transsexual, non-binary, nonbinary, assigned male at birth, assigned female at birth, biologically male, biologically female".
Larry Gostin, director of the World Health Organization Center on Global Health Law, said that the directive amounted to censorship of not only government employees, but private citizens as well. For example, if the lead author of a submitted paper works for the CDC and withdraws their name from the submission, that kills the submission even if coauthors who are private scientists remain on it. Other censored topics include
DEI,
climate change, and
HIV. Following extensive public backlash, some, but not all, of the removed pages were reinstated. The CDC's censorship led to many researchers and journalists to preserve databases themselves, with many removed articles being uploaded to archival sites such as the
Internet Archive. On February 4,
Doctors for America filed a federal lawsuit against the CDC, Food and Drug Administration, and Department of Health and Human Services, asking the removed websites to be put back online. On February 11, a judge ordered removed pages to be restored temporarily while the suit is being considered, citing doctors who said the removed materials were "vital for real-time clinical decision-making". On February 14, 2025, around 1,300 CDC employees were laid off by the administration, which included all first-year officers of the
Epidemic Intelligence Service. The cuts also terminated 16 of the 24 Laboratory Leadership Service program fellows, a program designed for early-career lab scientists to address laboratory testing shortcomings of the CDC. In the following month, the Trump administration quietly withdrew its CDC director nominee,
Dave Weldon, just minutes before his scheduled Senate confirmation hearing on March 13. In April 2025, it was reported that among the reductions is the elimination of the Freedom of Information Act team, the Division of Violence Prevention, laboratories involved in testing for antibiotic resistance, and the team responsible for determining recalls of hazardous infant products. Additional cuts affect the technology branch of the Center for Forecasting and Outbreak Analytics, which includes software engineers and computer scientists supporting the centre established during the COVID-19 pandemic to improve disease outbreak prediction. Experts have criticized the mass layoffs under Secretary of Health and Human Services
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for creating dangerous gaps in public health. VACS, for instance, has played an essential role in gathering high-quality, actionable data used to assess and mitigate violent harm against children, with such harm being estimated as affecting half of all children worldwide.
2025 headquarters shooting On August 8, 2025, 30-year-old Patrick Joseph White of
Kennesaw, Georgia, attacked the CDC's Roybal Campus in
Atlanta, Georgia. White attempted to enter the headquarters, but was thwarted by security. White then drove across the street to a
CVS Pharmacy where he barricaded himself inside on the second floor, and fired at the campus with a rifle, striking four CDC buildings on multiple floors over 180 times, breaking about 150 windows and piercing some of the blast-resistant windows; authorities recovered more than 500 shell casings and five firearms after the shooting. 33-year-old David Rose, a
DeKalb County Police Department officer, was fatally wounded by White as he arrived on the scene. Officers entered the pharmacy and found White dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. White is believed to have been motivated by
distrust in vaccines, and believed the
COVID-19 vaccine had made him depressed and suicidal. On August 11, Kennedy Jr. toured the Roybal Campus with deputy secretary
Jim O'Neill and CDC director
Susan Monarez, but did not speak with the media during the visit, although he did meet privately with Rose's widow. Trump did not respond to the shooting of the police officer. White's father spoke in an interview with
WANF, saying that he and his wife were watching a cable television network in their Kennesaw home when the phone rang. He picked up the phone and attempted to have a normal conversation with his son. White spoke to his father, "I'm gonna shoot up the CDC", before hanging up afterward. The couple immediately changed their channel to one of the Atlanta stations, where his father saw the unmistakable image of his car at the scene.
2025 advisory committee purge and leadership dispute On May 14, 2025, HHS Secretary
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. stated that lawyer Matthew Buzzelli was acting CDC director, though it was not listed on the CDC website. In June 2025, Kennedy fired all 17 members of the
Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) and—with one exception—appointed members who are either anti-vaccine activists or who lack expertise in vaccines.
Susan Monarez was confirmed as CDC head on July 31, 2025, but on August 27, it was announced on X (formerly Twitter) that she had been fired. Monarez disputed the legality of the firing, as it had not been carried out by the president, and it had been falsely reported that she had resigned. The president later officially carried out the firing. Monarez was fired after refusing to rubber stamp what were expected to be unscientific recommendations from ACIP and to fire senior staff vaccine experts. The next day, the Trump administration announced the selection of Deputy Secretary of Health and Human Services
Jim O'Neill as a replacement. Following news of Monarez's ouster, at least four other CDC senior officials announced their resignations: •
Debra Houry, Chief Medical Officer •
Demetre Daskalakis, Director of the
National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases • Daniel Jernigan, Director of the
National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases •
Jennifer Layden, Director of the Office of Public Health Data, Surveillance, and Technology, which contains the
National Center for Health Statistics Dozens of CDC employees walked out of headquarters and protested in support of Monarez and the departing officials. In November 2025 it was announced that primate research at CDC is due to end. ==Organization==