Press Release

CDC Announces First Ever Agency-Wide Research Agenda

Four Opportunities in March for Input

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Agency for Toxic Substance and Disease Registry today announced it is developing the first agency-wide research agenda in the history of CDC/ATSDR. The new agenda will set the overall course for both research conducted within the agency, and for research conducted by external grantees and partners.

"The primary objective of CDC's research agenda will be to address the agency's health protection goals and priorities," said Dr. Robert Spengler, CDC's director of the Office of Public Health Research. "We envision a CDC-wide research agenda that can coordinate, support and promote the collective research that the agency conducts or supports."

The research agenda will identify areas that CDC should address or coordinate with other partners in protecting the nation's health; provide incentives for expanded research funding; fill critical knowledge gaps that help achieve health protection goals; and provide evidence to improve existing or establish new public health interventions.

CDC is currently spending approximately $31 million for the protection research initiative. Last year $21.7 million was allocated through 57 grants to promote and support research initiatives in various areas including a study of worksite fitness for African American Women with Atlanta's Emory University and a study of preventing tobacco use in young Latino workers with Houston's Baylor University.

Health protection research conducted by CDC and partners will focus on beating some of the nation's most tenacious health problems: infectious disease, birth defects, and obesity. In addition research interventions will improve public health interventions to further reduce the risk factors associated with the leading causes of death and illness, including heart disease, cancer, and diabetes—these diseases account for 7 of every 10 deaths and affect the quality of life of 90 million Americans.

"Input from our partners and the public is vital to the agenda's content development; the research agenda will provide vision and coordination and ensure that CDC's work continues to be responsive to the public health needs and priorities of the public at large," Spengler added.

To help get public input, the CDC will sponsor Research Agenda Development Public Participation Meetings at four locations across the country. Participants must register to attend. The public participation locations and registration dates are:

The research agenda will directly influence the selection and implementation of community and national programs that protect the health of children, adolescents, adults and older adults as well as the public-at-large from terrorism, infectious, occupational, and environmental threats.

The first draft of the agenda will be developed by CDC staff, researchers, organizational partners and the public, and is expected to be available for public comment in June and completed in August.

More information on the CDC-Wide Research Agenda may be found on-line at the CDC Office of Public Health Research (OPHR) Website, http://www.cdc.gov/od/ophr/. More detailed information on CDC Goals established in 2004 may be found at: http://www.cdc.gov/futures/Goals_01-6-05.pdf.

Interested persons can register by visiting http://www.maximumtechnology.com/cdcreg.htm or by contacting:

Ms. Mollie Ergle, Meeting Coordinator, Office of Public Health Research, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Mail Stop E-72 1600 Clifton Rd. NE Atlanta, GA 30333, Email: mergle@cdc.gov Phone: 404-498-0132; Fax: 404-498-0011.

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This page last updated March 3, 2005
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