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Healthy People 2020

Healthy People provides science-based, 10-year national objectives for improving the health of all Americans. For 3 decades, Healthy People has established benchmarks and monitored progress over time in order to:

• Encourage collaborations across communities and sectors.
• Empower individuals toward making informed health decisions.
• Measure the impact of prevention activities.

Introducing Healthy People 2020

HealthyPeople.gov continues in this tradition with the launch on December 2, 2010 of its ambitious, yet achievable, 10-year agenda for improving the Nation’s health. Healthy People 2020 is the result of a multiyear process that reflects input from a diverse group of individuals and organizations.

Vision

A society in which all people live long, healthy lives.

Mission

Healthy People 2020 strives to:

• Identify nationwide health improvement priorities.
• Increase public awareness and understanding of the determinants of health, disease, and disability and the opportunities for progress.
• Provide measurable objectives and goals that are applicable at the national, State, and local levels.
• Engage multiple sectors to take actions to strengthen policies and improve practices that are driven by the best available evidence and knowledge.
• Identify critical research, evaluation, and data collection needs.

Overarching Goals

• Attain high-quality, longer lives free of preventable disease, disability, injury, and premature death.
• Achieve health equity, eliminate disparities, and improve the health of all groups.
• Create social and physical environments that promote good health for all.
• Promote quality of life, healthy development, and healthy behaviors across all life stages.

Leading Health Indicators

A smaller set of Healthy People 2020 objectives, called Leading Health Indicators (LHIs), has been selected to communicate high-priority health issues and actions that can be taken to address them. The National Indian Health Board has selected those LHIs that specifically address the American Indian/Alaska Native Population and contain statistics regarding those areas.

Below is the list of available Leading Health Indicators for American Indian/Alaska Native Populations:

• ACCESS TO HEALTH CARE
• SOCIAL DETERMINANTS OF HEALTH
• TOBACCO
• SUBSTANCE ABUSE

Healthy People 2020 Tribal Objectives Matrix

• Healthy People 2020 Tribal Objectives Matrix (PDF)

Additional Information

Healthy People 2020 tracks approximately 1,200 objectives organized into 42 topic areas, each of which represents an important public health area. At the time of the December 2010 launch 911 objectives were measurable with baseline data and established targets. A few objectives that have achieved high levels of success are being tracked without a target for informational purposes. Targets will be set during the decade for these objectives if warranted. The rest of the objectives did not have baseline data and were considered developmental. Targets for the developmental objectives will be set when baseline data become available. Healthy People 2020 also includes a new Foundation section which addresses several important health topics: General Health Status, Health-Related Quality of Life and Well-Being, Determinants of Health, and Disparities

The new interactive HealthyPeople.gov web site replaces the traditional print publication released for previous Healthy People initiatives. Objective information including objective number, objective text, baseline, target, and data source used can be found on the HealthyPeople.gov website.

The most recent data available for tracking Healthy People 2020 objectives – including socio-demographic data tabulated separately by race, Hispanic origin, gender, education, income, family type, age, country of birth, disability, geographic location, marital status, and selected other populations, as available – are currently available online at the Health Indicators Warehouse. Eventually, all Healthy People 2020 data will be available on the HealthyPeople.gov website.

NCHS is responsible for coordinating the effort to monitor the Nation's progress of the objectives toward the targets using data from about 200 different data sources including NCHS data systems, other Federal Government data systems, and a variety of other data sources.

Because these objectives are national, not solely Federal, their achievement is dependent in part on the ability of health agencies at all levels of the government and on non-governmental organizations to assess objective progress. Healthy People 2020 primarily tracks national data. State and county data will be included as they become available. State- and community-based data are provided for selected indicators, including a number of Healthy People 2020 objectives, in the Health Indicators Warehouse website.

Technical information on Healthy People data issues, data sources, detailed definitions for each objective, and additional resources can currently be found in the Health Indicators Warehouse website.