CDC 2009-2012 Accomplishments

Americans are less likely to be injured or killed on the road.

• Deaths from motor vehicle crashes are near their all-time low. CDC data have helped states implement primary seat belt laws, child safety seat legislation, and safer licensing laws for young drivers. Thirty-nine states now have laws for mandatory use of ignition interlock systems after a first conviction of driving under the influence.
• Motor vehicle crashes are the number one killer of teenagers. CDC is helping parents play a key role in keeping their teens safe on the road through the Parents Are the Key campaign, which provides tools and proven steps to reduce teen driving injuries and deaths.

CDC works continuously with state and local public health partners, providing them the guidance and support they need to handle a variety of health threats.

• New CDC research indicates that all Americans born between 1945 and 1965 should be tested for Hepatitis C. Implementation of these recommendations could prevent more than 100,000 premature deaths.
• CDC supports healthy school environments. Approximately 40% fewer schools sell low-nutrition food and sugar-sweetened beverages on school grounds.

Countries are better able to find and stop health threats – and Americans are safer because diseases and pandemics are stopped before they reach U.S. borders.

• CDC’s Field Epidemiology Training Program (FETP) has strengthened health systems in more than 60 countries by graduating more than 2,600 highly trained disease detectives, approximately 80% of whom remain in their countries in a leadership role detecting and responding to health threats. Since 2009, CDC-supported FETPs have responded to 709 outbreaks and strengthened 1,293 surveillance systems, resulting in increased capacity to detect disease and prevent its spread in these countries and around the world.

Americans’ lives are protected by groundbreaking advances in the nation’s public health laboratories.

• CDC’s laboratories were the first in the world to identify and report the new 2009 H1N1 virus. CDC also tracked the characteristics and spread of the disease as well as the safety of the vaccine. In the U.S. alone, more than 80 million Americans were vaccinated and the combined interventions of vaccination and antiviral treatment prevented about 1 million cases of flu, more than 15,000 hospitalizations, and more than 800 deaths.