The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Summary
Opened in 1946 as the Communicable Disease Center with a $10 million budget and a mission of stopping malaria, CDC now runs the nation's disease-surveillance system on $7.706 billion in FY2026 budget authority and 10,169 full-time staff -- about $22.55 per U.S. resident -- while its PulseNet network alone is credited with preventing an estimated 270,000 illnesses a year, a $70 return for every dollar spent.
The organization
Its mission
The agency's own budget submission states the charge: "is the nation's public health protection agency and a critical component of America's health security infrastructure⧉" -- detect and stop disease threats before they spread.
Founded when, and why
The Communicable Disease Center opened July 1, 1946, on one floor of a small Atlanta building⧉ with a $10 million budget, fewer than 400 employees, and one primary mission: prevent malaria from spreading across the nation. Congress renamed it the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the Preventive Health Amendments of 1992⧉, keeping the acronym.
What it costs — money and people
's FY2026 enacted budget authority came to $7.706 billion⧉ -- $9.148 billion once Prevention and Public Health Fund and PHS Evaluation transfers are added -- funding 10,169 full-time-equivalent staff⧉: 9,784 direct hires plus 385 reimbursable. Against the Census Bureau's 341.8 million U.S. residents⧉ as of July 2025, that core budget authority works out to about $22.55 per person.
View data as table
| Chronic Disease Prevention & Health Promotion | 1,432.8 | tobacco, diabetes, cancer, heart disease programs |
|---|---|---|
| HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STI & TB Prevention | 1,384.1 | domestic HIV, hepatitis, STI, TB programs |
| Immunization & Respiratory Diseases | 913.3 | vaccine programs, flu planning and response |
| Public Health Preparedness & Response | 913.2 | state/local emergency-preparedness cooperative agreements |
| Emerging & Zoonotic Infectious Diseases | 781.3 | outbreak surveillance, AR Lab Network, PulseNet, quarantine |
| Public Health Scientific Services | 767.5 | health statistics, surveillance, data modernization |
| All other CDC activities | 2,955.5 | injury prevention, global health, occupational safety, environmental health, birth defects/disability, cross-cutting support, buildings |
What it produces
The output is countable. Since February 2024, public-health labs using 's diagnostic tools tested more than 223,000 specimens for H5 bird-flu strains⧉, catching six of the 71 confirmed human cases through that surveillance alone. In 2024 supported 220 healthcare-associated outbreak responses⧉; its Antimicrobial Resistance Laboratory Network ran more than 235,000 tests in 2025⧉; and its Epidemiology and Laboratory Capacity program funds infectious-disease detection in 65 jurisdictions⧉ -- all 50 states, seven large localities, and U.S. territories.
Value to society, by the numbers
's own numbers put a price on the counterfactual. PulseNet⧉, the laboratory network that traces foodborne outbreaks to their source by whole-genome sequencing, is credited with preventing an estimated 270,000 illnesses and saving at least $500 million in medical costs and lost productivity in a year -- a $70 return for every $1 invested. That is the mechanism the budget buys, repeated across 's other surveillance systems: illnesses caught before they become outbreaks.
- 's FY2026 enacted budget authority ($7.706 billion, 10,169 FTEs) works out to about $22.55 per U.S. resident -- the machinery that runs the nation's disease surveillance, public-health labs, and 65-jurisdiction ELC grant network.
- 's own PulseNet foodborne-outbreak network is credited with a $70-per-$1-invested return -- roughly 270,000 illnesses prevented and $500 million saved a year -- the kind of counterfactual 's budget documents cite as the payoff for its surveillance mission.
Your handles.* Suspect a vaccine side effect? File a report with the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), co-run by and . Have a public-health question? Contact CDC-INFO, the agency's public contact center, by phone, email, or web form. To comment on a proposed rule -- quarantine regulations, data-collection notices, and more -- see CDC's open dockets on Regulations.gov.
Sources(5) ▾
- U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention FY 2027 Justification of Estimates for Appropriations Committees (2026-04-09) — 's own FY2027 congressional budget justification (167pp) -- the source for 's statutory identity and mission statement (p.3), the Overview of Performance workload figures (H5 bird-flu surveillance, healthcare-associated outbreak responses, p.7), the Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases activity narrative including the ELC program's jurisdictional reach (p.34) and its 'By the Numbers' box (AR Lab Network testing, port health activity, PulseNet foodborne-outbreak prevention estimate, p.37), and the Detail of Full-Time Equivalent Employment table (p.147) this entry's KPI comes from. cdc.gov · original document
- U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention FY 2026 Operating Plan (2026-03-26) — 's own official operating plan implementing its FY2026 enacted appropriation -- the source for this entry's headline budget KPI: Budget Authority ($7,706,314 thousand, FY2026 Final) and the total Program Level once Prevention and Public Health Fund (PPHF) and PHS Evaluation Fund transfers are added ($9,147,633 thousand). cdc.gov · original document
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Our History -- Our Story (David J. Sencer CDC Museum) (2023-04-19) — 's own self-published agency history, maintained by its museum office -- source for the July 1, 1946 founding of the Communicable Disease Center in Atlanta, its original malaria mission, its founding budget and headcount, and the 1947 acquisition of the Clifton Road land that remains 's Atlanta headquarters campus today. cdc.gov · original document
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, Announcement of CDC Name Change (MMWR) (1992-10-30) — 's own contemporaneous announcement, in its weekly MMWR publication, of the October 27, 1992 statutory renaming from Centers for Disease Control to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention under the Preventive Health Amendments of 1992, with Congress directing that the acronym be retained. cdc.gov · original document
- U.S. Census Bureau, U.S. Population Growth Slows Due to Historic Decline in Net International Migration (Vintage 2025 national population estimate) (2026-01-27) — The source for the July 1, 2025 U.S. resident population estimate (341.8 million) used as the per-resident KPI's denominator. Same document the good-citizen-cms, good-citizen-hhs-oig, and good-citizen-dod-oig entries already rely on. census.gov · original document
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is an agency within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services⧉: the federal hub of disease surveillance, run from its Atlanta headquarters through its own laboratories and the state and local health departments its grants fund.