This story was originally published by Healthbeat. Sign up for their public health newsletters at healthbeat.org/newsletters.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has deep roots in Atlanta and plays an important role in making the city a public health center. Why is the CDC there when most federal agencies are in the Washington, D.C., area?
As with many things in Atlanta, the answer involves Coca-Cola — and mosquitoes. Coca-Cola chairman Robert W. Woodruff purchased land in Baker County, Georgia, for quail hunting about 100 years ago.
Malaria plagued the South then in a way that’s hard for us to imagine now. One early CDC administrator said a lumber company in north Florida needed a 700-person workforce to ensure 300 were healthy enough to work during malaria season. Half the workforce was ill at any one time, and everyone had to plan for malaria season.
“This was expected as a way of life,” said epidemiologist and early CDC administrator Melvin Goodwin, according to an account in the journal Southern Spaces. The disease was a health and economic burden in Georgia.