Acronyms, Abbreviations and Agencies

Washington, DC is a city whose vernacular is deeply rooted in acronyms and abbreviations. Sometimes it feels like you need a top secret clearance or access to a guide book of all the different non-profits, for-profits, voluntary health groups, patient groups, and federal agencies. For (completely made up) example, "We recently saw the CBO's numbers for LHHS, but they don't match the OMB numbers that we saw a month ago regarding NIH or CDC."

If you understood that, hooray for you! If not, you're not alone. Heck, I'm pretty sure the CBO doesn't even have numbers for LHHS. But the point is there are an awful lot of groups around here talking about an amazing number of things - many of which deserve our attention.

Here at New Voices, there are four federal agencies we talk about a lot:

1. AHRQ - Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality
2. CDC - Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
3. FDA - Food and Drug Administration
4. NIH - National Institutes of Health

We're going to help decode these four multi-letter names so you can see the agencies behind them over the next few weeks. Come back tomorrow for Kimberly's look into the CDC.