CDC Addresses Epilepsy

CDC addresses the public health challenge of epilepsy through multiple strategies. Healthcare providers, researchers, and other professionals can learn more about this work below.

Our Purpose – To improve the health and well-being of people with epilepsy.

To accomplish this, the CDC Epilepsy Program

• Leads self-management research, program implementation, and dissemination, including
  • Collaborating with the Managing Epilepsy Well Network.
  • Researching new self-management programs.
  • Disseminating our work to partners so that people with epilepsy can benefit from our programs.
• Establishes and expands surveillance and data collection to
  • Describe the burden of epilepsy.
  • Identify risk and protective factors.
  • Evaluate prevention efforts.
  • Prioritize program development.
• Prevents known risk factors for epilepsy by
  • Developing specific interventions (e.g., to detect cysticercosis infection).
  • Promoting the health promotion and disease prevention efforts of others (e.g., traumatic brain injury, stroke).
• Develops and promotes programs that create a more supportive environment for people with epilepsy by
  • Elevating epilepsy as a public health issue to motivate action.
  • Complementing activities of key partners such as the Epilepsy Foundation.
  • Funding new programs, services, and activities.

CDC Epilepsy Program activities also fall within the National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion’s four key action areas [PDF-965K] of Epidemiology and Surveillance, Environmental Approaches, Community-Clinical Linkages, and Health Systems Interventions. Read more on the program’s At-A-Glance.

The CDC Epilepsy Program also creates features to bring attention to important epilepsy issues and topics.

The CDC Epilepsy Program Logic Model [PDF-140KB] shows how program resources support different funded activities and the expected impacts these activities will have in the short, medium, and long term.