The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (or CDC) is an agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services based in the Metro Atlanta area, adjacent to the campus of Emory University and northeast of downtown Atlanta. It works to protect public health and safety by providing information to enhance health decisions, and it promotes health through partnerships with state health departments and other organizations. The CDC focuses national attention on developing and applying disease prevention and control (especially infectious diseases), environmental health, occupational safety and health, health promotion, prevention and education activities designed to improve the health of the people of the United States.

On July 1, 1946, the Communicable Disease Center was established as a small branch of the U.S. Public Health Service and was located on the sixth floor of the Volunteer Building on Peachtree Street in Atlanta, Georgia, in what was once the heart of the malaria zone. The new agency was descended from several wartime agencies, including the Office of Malaria Control in War Areas, and the Office of Typhus Fever Control.

With a budget at the time of about $1 million, 59 percent of its personnel were engaged in mosquito abatement using the insecticide DDT and habitat control with the objective of control and eradication of malaria in the United States. Among its 369 employees, the main jobs at CDC were originally entomology and engineering. In CDC's initial years, more than six and a half million homes were sprayed. In 1946, there were only seven medical officers on duty and an early organization chart was drawn, somewhat fancifully, in the shape of a mosquito.