Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Introduction

Many Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) programs are implemented with the intent of reducing rates of diseases. Such programs seek to employ effective strategies that will produce changes in knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors associated with disease prevention. Because many people are both sexually active and engage in high-risk sexual behaviors, they are often the intended audience for such programs and schools are frequently used to reach them. Other populations such as commercial sex workers and injection drug users are core transmitter groups for CDC, and programs that employ outreach activities are often successful in enhancing their access to CDC programming. (Mercy: 285-301)

Many of the components of successful CDC programs are known. They include: cultural sensitivity; participant involvement; peer leadership; and the use of outreach workers. Much less is known about how programs are actually implemented in order to achieve their results. This paper therefore presents a model for the implementation of CDC programs and uses it to illustrate the challenges of program implementation through reference to four quite different CDC initiatives.

History of the Organization

CDC's mission of promoting health and quality of life by preventing and controlling disease, injury, and disability continues to be increasingly dependent on IT, electronic communications, and digital media. Detecting health events and assessing health status trends in populations in a timely, comprehensive, reliable, and cost-effective manner is only possible through intergovernmental relationship. (Keenan:147-152)

Health care in this country is undergoing radical change as a result of new health delivery technologies, diagnostics, pharmaceuticals, remote telemedicine, and most of all -- health care reform through managed care. Public health is also being reinvented with new challenges and opportunities in the core functions of assessment, policy development, and assurance of health services and protection of health for all. (Seltzer: 609-616)

There are a number of driving factors affecting CDC's public health mission of preventing disease, disability, and injury; such as newly emerging diseases, health care reform, and new legislation. There are also a number of global trends that provide opportunities for CDC to better achieve its goals through intergovernmental relationship , such as health care and public health investments in intergovernmental relationship and information systems, the development of electronic medical records, the growing ubiquity of electronic connectivity, networking and the Internet, and the convergence of communications media.

The role of public health in disaster preparedness and response is unique, and is not performed by any of the other disciplines that typically respond to disasters and which differ from public health in mission, services provided, and personnel training (e.g., emergency medical services, clinical medicine). Therefore, the role of public health as a responder needs to be formalized and become an indispensable and recognizable part of comprehensive response to disasters. One common thread characterizes the work of public health agencies in relation to most types of disasters: they possess the knowledge and skills required to safeguard the health of the public by limiting morbidity and mortality, whether an event poses a threat to health from the outset ...