CDC Name Change: Semantic, Symbolic, or Silly?
U.S. Preventive Medicine is lobbying for a name change for the government's public health agency. The proposed change would be to convert the Centers for Disease Control and Prevent to the shockingly dissimilar Centers for Disease Prevention and Control. No potential for confusion there.
According to a press release today, the motivation for the change is clear: "we need to consciously break with 'health care' norms of the last century and establish a new preventive health care paradigm." Clearly by putting "prevention" ahead of "control" in the NAME of the federal organization, it will demonstrate to bureacrats, politicians, and citizens far and wide that the health care system must change to a preventive model of thinking about disease.
Such a move is much too subtle and will do little, in my view, to change the way we think about healthcare, disease, and our responsibilities toward our own health and the public's health. Thumbs up on the symbolic value, but as for any real political impact--let's not waste money changing the signs to CDPC and spend those resources and mental energy instead on making real policy changes that may actually make a difference in the prevention of morbidity and mortality in the United States.
Summer Johnson, PhD
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