- The ARC - California Edition -

New CDC Center

The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) (http://www.cdc.gov), Jeffrey Koplan, announced on April 16, 2001 the formal creation of a new center that will be known as the National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities (http://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd). This center will join the six other centers that make up this lead federal agency for protecting the health and safety of people throughout the country.

The new center was established within the Children’s Health Act of 2000 that was enacted and signed last fall. This legislation instructed the CDC to expand and intensify programs and functions that related to birth defects; folic acid; cerebral palsy; mental retardation; child development; newborn screening; autism; fragile X syndrome; fetal alcohol syndrome; pediatric genetic disorders; disability prevention; or other relevant diseases, disorders, or conditions. 

Koplan also announced the appointment of Jose F. Cordero, M.D. as acting director of the new center at CDC. Cordero has spent almost 22 years at CDC, of which 15 years of his CDC career was with the Birth Defects Branch. Most recently, he has served as Deputy Director of the CDC Immunization Program.

The lead sponsor for the Children’s Health Act was the March of Dimes, a national voluntary health agency whose mission is to prevent birth defects. An equally important supporting sponsor was The Arc of the United States (http://www.thearc.org) which considers the establishment of a separate center as a major step which should result in a more aggressive approach being taken by CDC in their mission to eliminate or reduce the causes of mental retardation and related disabilities.

"The new center will bring greater attention to birth defects and developmental disabilities," according to Deborah Cohen, PhD, chairwoman of The Arc-US Health Promotion and Disabilities Prevention committee. "We have never been able to clearly establish how many persons there are with mental retardation and other developmental disabilities, and the center may give us the opportunity to establish meaningful surveillance systems."