Foreword

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has been engaged in global health activities from its earliest days as a malaria control center, nearly 6 decades ago. These decades have been filled with global public health triumphs – such as the eradication of smallpox and the near-eradication of polio and Guinea worm disease – as well as battles still underway, such as the HIV/AIDS pandemic and the toll that tobacco continues to take around the world. The long history of CDC’s involvement in global public health offers examples of both optimism and a sobering sense of how daunting many global health tasks remain.

During that time, the world of public health has changed dramatically, and CDC has changed with it. Overall, with few exceptions (in sub-Saharan Africa and the newly independent states of the former Soviet Republic), life expectancy has increased steadily around the world and continues to do so. Yet the infectious diseases that dominated morbidity and mortality charts around the world are still very much with us. In some cases, they have taken different and in many cases more complex forms – such as strains of tuberculosis resistant to the drugs used to treat them. New and emerging infectious diseases have been added to the roster of global health threats.

At the same time, demographic and cultural changes have brought chronic diseases to the fore in both the developed and developing world, with the increased incidence of diseases such as cancer and diabetes – the so-called “diseases of affluence” – becoming truly global phenomena.

Every year, the global forces of economics, technology, and culture make our world a smaller and smaller place. A constant and rapid flow of people and goods circles the globe – sometimes carrying with it microbes and risk factors that threaten the health and well-being of people far from the original source. This same flow, however, also carries innovation and optimism, and allows different countries and regions to learn from one another in their common quest to improve the public’s health.

There is no question that the health of people in the United States is inextricably linked to the health of people in other countries, and vice versa. As the nation’s prevention agency, CDC is dedicated to strengthening global surveillance systems, building public health’s infrastructure and capacity, preventing disease and injury, adding to the knowledge base of what works through applied research, and exchanging scientific information and lessons learned. This edition of CDC’s Global Health Activities Report documents CDC’s global health activities in each of these areas – activities that would not be possible without the collaboration of our many partners here and abroad, who share with us a vision of a safer, healthier world. We look forward to continuing this important dimension of our mission as we work together each year to make the world a safer, healthier place than it was in the past.

Stephen Blount, M.D., M.P.H.
Associate Director for Global Health
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention