METHODS: See conclusions statement.
RESULTS: See conclusions statement.
CONCLUSIONS: MMWR plays a critical role in public health by providing timely and accurate information for action. For example, MMWR was the first to publish descriptions of cases of Legionnaire’s disease, AIDS, and 2009 H1N1 influenza, and these initial reports led to further investigations and subsequent public health recommendations. Publishing in MMWR has several benefits. First, its readership is broad, consisting of physicians, nurses, public health practitioners, epidemiologists and other scientists, researchers, educators, and laboratorians. In addition, MMWR has an extensive reach, with more than 1.6 million page views of the website per month, an email distribution list of ~250,000, and an increasing presence on social media. MMWR reports are further disseminated when they are highlighted in news reports and redistributed by other journals and medical associations. Finally, MMWR is also widely cited in the medical literature; during 2014, Google Scholar named MMWR as the #1 epidemiology journal, based on numbers of citations. This presentation will also include a discussion of topics of interest to MMWR editors and the major criteria for publication in the MMWR Weekly.