Healthy People 2020: A Systematic Approach to Health Improvement

Image from “Healthy People 2020 brochure”available via healthypeople.gov. Curious about the status of health in the U.S. and what’s being done to improve it? Check out Healthy People 2020, the latest national health promotion and disease prevention agenda released by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The agenda includes a set of objectives to be reached by the year 2020, and was developed through a collaboration between HHS and other federal agencies, public stakeholders, and an advisory committee. The Healthy People initiative began in 1979 with the surgeon general’s report on health promotion and disease prevention. Following the report, the first Healthy People was developed with a list of leading health indicators and set targets for those indicators to be reached by the end of the decade. Healthy People 2020 is the fourth such report, with its vision to achieve a society in which all people live long, healthy lives, and was announced on December 2, 2010. Healthy People 2020 contains 42 topic areas with more than 1,200 objectives. Within these objectives, a small set of high-priority health issues have been identified that represent a significant threat to the public’s health. These 26 Leading Health Indicators (LHI) fall under 12 topic areas, and as of a March 2014 progress update over half (14) of the 26 indicators have either met their target or shown improvement. The development of Healthy People involves an extensive stakeholde...
Source: Network News - Category: Databases & Libraries Authors: Tags: Public Health Source Type: news