Funding - Healthy People 2010 Goals

The nationwide health promotion and disease prevention agenda, Healthy People, started in 1979 with a report entitled Healthy People: The Surgeon General's Report on Health Promotion and Disease Prevention. This report outlined five national goals for reducing premature deaths and improving the quality of life for older Americans. In 1980, Promoting Health/Preventing Disease: Objectives for the Nation, presented 226 health targets for the nation to achieve by 1990. Healthy People 2000: National Disease Prevention and Health Promotion Objectives, released in 1990, was divided into 22 priority areas with 319 objectives that were to be achieved by the year 2000.

The Healthy People Consortium, a group of 350 national organizations and 250 state public health, mental health, substance abuse, and environmental agencies under the guidance of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, conducted three national meetings and five regional meetings in 1998 to formulate the set of goals for the year 2010. Individuals and organizations gave testimony in the regional meetings and on two other occasions in 1997 and 1998. The public from every state, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico was allowed to comment (by mail or Internet) on the objectives the Consortium was formulating. Then, in January 2000, the report Healthy People 2010: Understanding and Improving Health was released.⁹ It contained 10 leading health indicators and 28 priority areas with 467 objectives to be achieved by 2010. The primary goals of Healthy People 2010 are to increase healthy life expectancy and eliminate health disparities.

The chart on the previous page shows one of the Healthy People 2010 goals being met. Life expectancy increased during the 20th Century, from 47.3 years in 1900 to 76.9 years in 2000. Life expectancy is expected to increase well into the 21st century, with a projected life expectancy in 2060 of 82 years. The life expectancy of blacks and whites are also converging, suggesting that access to health care for blacks has gotten better throughout the century. However there is still a long way to go, as we've seen in earlier chapters.

The next three panels will discuss some of the leading health indicators mentioned in Healthy People 2010.

Sources: National Center for Health Statistics. Centers for Disease Control. National Vital Statistics Report, October 9, 2001 and March 21, 2002. Retrieved August 12, 2002 from http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Healthy People 2010: Understanding and Improving Health, 2nd ed., November 2000. Retrieved August 27, 2002 from http://www.health.gov/healthypeople. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. "Healthy People 2000 Fact Sheet." Retrieved August 27, 2002 from http://odphp.ososphs.dhhs.gov/pubs/hp2000/hp2kfact.htm. Capital Region Information Service. "Healthy People 2000." Retrieved August 30, 2002 from http://www.crisny.org/health/us/health7.html.