Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report turns 50

Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report celebrates its 50th anniversary this year.

Originally published as The Bulletin of the Public Health when it launched in 1878 under the National Quarantine Act, the publication became the official voice of the CDC on Jan. 13, 1961, as part of the CDC’s absorption of disease surveillance functions from the National Office of Vital Statistics (now the National Center for Health Statistics), where MMWR had been published.

In its inaugural issue, Alexander Langmuir, the CDC’s chief epidemiologist, wrote, “We believe the closer current contact with those reporting morbidity and mortality data will better permit us more rapidly and successfully to carry out our primary role of providing consultation and assistance to the States when communicable disease problems occur.”

Since then, MMWR has reported on all the major infectious diseases affecting the US and the world, from small pox in the 1960s, to AIDS and HIV in the 1980s and ’90s, to the H1N1 virus, most recently. Today, MMWR also reports heavily on non-infectious disease topics.

Before the advent of the Internet, MMWR was the primary scientific source for reliable and rapidly delivered public health information. Today, MMWR is online and in print with a variety of titles under the MMWR umbrella.

Later this year, to commemorate its anniversary, MMWR will release to subscribers a special supplement covering its history and an anthology of reports covering the most important events and innovations in public health since 1961.

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