7The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has written this handbook to help you, the child care provider, reduce sickness, injury, and other health problems in your child care facility. The information in this handbook applies to any child care provider in any setting, whether you take care of children in a center or in your own home. This handbook revises and updates the previous CDC handbook, What to Do to Stop Disease in Child Day Care Centers, which is now out of print. This handbook will help you maintain a safe and healthy child care setting, with up-to-date information, including: - How infectious diseases are spread. - What you can do to keep yourself and the children in your care healthy. - What disease and injury prevention practices you should follow. - What disease and injury prevention practices you should require parents to follow. - What the most common childhood diseases and health conditions are, how to recognize them, and what you can do when they occur.