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HIV became known in the early and mid-1980s, as the United States began to confront the public health challenge posed by the AIDS epidemic, the CDC became the focal point for developing a strategy of prevention and public health response. As a result of significant increases in funding for AIDS since the early 1980's, AIDS-related programs constitute more than 40 percent of the current CDC budget. In addition, the highly visible role that CDC epidemiologists played in linking AIDS to particular life-styles and in engaging the discussion of how to prevent the spread of the epidemic by public health measures has significantly defined the public perception of the public health profession.

Public health practitioners have long been responsible for surveillance of the spread of communicable diseases and for population-based interventions to alter the course of epidemics. Over the course of the AIDS epidemic, public health providers increasingly have been drawn into supplying primary care services for HIV-infected individuals. Especially since therapies have become available to treat HIV disease before symptoms appear, public health providers are not only implementing programs to offer individual counseling and education, but also providing diagnostic services and medical care.