Press Release

CDC Launches New Home Page and other Web Site Improvements

Usable Layout, New Search Engine and New Features Help People More Easily Find Information and Resources

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) today unveiled a new look for the home page and major topic pages of its Web site. The changes are designed to make it easier for people to find health information and resources quickly. The CDC Web site address is www.cdc.gov.

The redesigned site has an improved layout, a more powerful search engine, and other features to help people locate needed health and science information more efficiently. The CDC Web site averages nine million visits a month, with an average of 37 million pages viewed monthly.

"The new CDC.gov home page is our first big step toward a truly interactive web gateway for people seeking personalized information about health issues," said Dr. Julie Gerberding, director of the CDC. "We want all our customers—not just health professionals and scientists, but also parents, students, businesses, and other stakeholders - to get the information they need from CDC where they want it, when they want it, and how they want it."

Among new features on the home page:

• Health and safety information is now grouped in broad, easy-to-browse topic areas. For example, clicking on "Life Stages and Populations" takes visitors to a page with sections including pregnancy, women's health, men's health, minority health, and more (http://www.cdc.gov/LifeStages/).
• Additional new features provide better access to data and statistics, recent news, tools and resources, and new publications.
• A new Google-based search engine provides more relevant search results.
• An interactive features area at the top of the new home page highlights a number of current issues, events and health topics with relevant photographs or videos. This feature enables CDC to better display health recommendations, guidelines and upcoming events.
• A "Top 20 at CDC.gov" section allows visitors to quickly view a list of the most popular health topics, and access each directly from the home page.

CDC's new Web site improvements were guided by Internet industry studies, analyses of CDC Web site visits, information about how visitors use the CDC Web site and research conducted with a wide range of CDC.gov users. In the user studies, CDC employees, members of the public and individuals from groups that frequently use the CDC Web site (e.g., health professionals) were brought in to test the previous CDC.gov site to identify problem areas and to test different home page designs and potential features.

"The CDC's new home page and Web site improvements were guided by extensive research with people who use it," said Jay Bernhardt, PhD, MPH, director of the National Center for Health Marketing (NCHM), the Center leading CDC's e-health and new media innovations. "We want it to be easy for people to find the health information they are seeking. We believe the millions of people who come to CDC's Web site will be pleased with these changes, and the many innovations we have planned for the months ahead."

Bernhardt pointed out that not every page on the CDC Web site has been changed yet. And he said that additional upgrades will be made in coming months.

For more information and a tutorial about the changes to the CDC Web site, visitors can take a virtual tour at http://www.cdc.gov/vrtour.html. Additional information and images can also be found at http://www.cdc.gov/Other/about_cdcgov.html.

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U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES