Founding of the CDC

The agency now known as the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was founded on July 1, 1946, as the Communicable Disease Center, the successor to the World War II Malaria Control in War Areas program. Atlanta, Georgia was chosen as its home because malaria was endemic across the southern United States, and the new agency's first offices sat on the sixth floor of the Volunteer Building on Peachtree Street; in its founding year, 59 percent of its personnel worked in mosquito abatement and habitat control aimed at controlling and eradicating malaria within the country. Under the leadership of Joseph Walter Mountin, the agency pushed steadily to extend its responsibilities from malaria alone to communicable disease broadly, the expansion that produced the CDC as it is known today.