Focus Areas

To keep pace with emerging public health challenges and to address the leading causes of death and disability, the CDC has begun an effort to achieve measurable impact quickly in a few targeted areas. The term "Winnable Battles" describes public health priorities with large-scale impact on health and with known, effective strategies to intervene. The charge under Winnable Battles is to identify optimal strategies and to rally resources and partnerships to accelerate a measurable impact on health.

To date, CDC Director Dr. Thomas R. Frieden and CDC leaders have identified these winnable battles based on the scope of the burden and our ability to make significant progress in improving outcomes. These priority areas include:

• Food Safety – Foodborne diseases affect millions of people and kill thousands in the U.S. each year.
• Global Immunization – CDC is implementing global immunization programs to eradicate polio, prevent measles and rubella, end the meningitis epidemic in Africa, accelerate the introduction of pneumococcal and rotavirus vaccines, and strengthen countries' own immunization systems.
• Healthcare-associated Infections – HAIs affect patient lives and add to our growing healthcare costs.
• HIV – There are more than 1 million people living with HIV in the U.S.
• Lymphatic Filariasis in the Americas - CDC and its partners are working to eliminate lymphatic filariasis (LF) from the areas of the Americas where the disease still exists.
• Mother-to-Child Transmission of HIV and Congenital Syphilis - CDC works with Ministries of Health and other partners to prevent HIV and syphilis from passing from mothers to babies, thus reducing the number of babies who suffer early death and/or chronic illness caused by these infections.
• Motor Vehicle Injuries – Motor vehicle-related injuries are the leading cause of death in the first three decades of life.
• Nutrition, Physical Activity, and Obesity – Excess weight contributes to many of the leading causes of death in the United States, including heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and some types of cancer.
• Teen Pregnancy – In 2009, the number of births to teenage mothers was 409,840 – a birth rate of 39.1 per 1,000 women aged 15 to 19.
• Tobacco – Tobacco use remains the leading preventable cause of disease and death in the United States.