HHS Launches Healthy People 2020 – Health Goals for the Next Decade

In 1979, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) began a process to improve the health of Americans through a project known as Healthy People: The Surgeon General’s Report on Health Promotion and Disease Prevention, which provided national goals for reducing premature deaths and preserving independence for older adults. 

In 1980, another report, Promoting Health/Preventing Disease: Objectives for the Nation, set forth 226 targeted health objectives for the Nation to achieve over the next 10 years.  Healthy People 2000: National Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Objectives, released in 1990, identified health improvement goals and objectives to be reached by the year 2000. The Healthy People 2010 initiative, released in 2000, continued in this tradition as an instrument to improve health for the first decade of the 21st century.

Healthy People 2010 looked at the scientific advances that took place over the past 20 years in preventive medicine, disease surveillance, vaccine and therapeutic development, and information technology. It also looked at the changing demographics of the U.S., the changes that have taken place in health care, and the growing impact of global forces on our national health status. A number of scientific experts from federal agencies provided input into the initiative and over 11,000 comments from the public were considered. The outcome of Healthy People 2010 was 467 objectives in 28 focus areas, providing an “encyclopedic compilation of health improvement opportunities for the next decade.”

The major goals of each of these programs have been to increase the quality and years of healthy life (i.e. growing elderly population) and to eliminate health disparities (i.e. more diverse population).

Healthy People 2020

Earlier this month, HHS announced Healthy People 2020, the nation’s new 10-year goals and objectives for health promotion and disease prevention. HHS acknowledged that the Healthy People initiative “in just the last decade, has either progressed toward or met 71 percent of its Healthy People targets.”  

The 2020 initiative includes a number of new topic areas including: Adolescent Health, Blood Disorders and Blood Safety, Dementias, including Alzheimer’s Disease, and several others.

Additionally, the new initiative includes “myHealthyPeople,” a new challenge for technology application developers. This challenge encourages developers to create easy-to-use applications for professionals who are working with the new national health objectives and state- and community-level health data. The idea is that “myHealthyPeople‟ apps challenge will help spur innovative approaches to information technology that will help communities track their progress using Healthy People objectives and targets as well as develop an agenda for health improvement.”

Mission

The mission of Healthy People 2020 strives to identify nationwide health improvement priorities. It also looks to increase public awareness and understanding of the determinants of health, disease, and disability and the opportunities for progress. Additionally, it strives to:

•  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; and
• Identify critical research, evaluation, and data collection needs.

Overarching Goals

The overarching goals of the new initiative are to:

• 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; and
• Promote quality of life, healthy development, and healthy behaviors across all life stages.

Collaboration

The goals set by Healthy People 2020 hold promise for the future of health care, especially in light of health care reform. However, with 30 million people soon to be enrolled in America’s health care system, our country will face significant obstacles dealing with diverse populations, more elderly patients, and a wide variety of untreated or chronic conditions.

To overcome these challenges and to meet the goals set by Healthy People 2020, we will need to encourage and promote strong communication and partnerships between multiple stakeholders. As HHS recognized, for the past three decades, Healthy People has established benchmarks and monitored progress over time in order to “encourage collaborations across sectors, guide individuals toward making informed health decisions, and measure the impact of prevention activities.”

Since the mission of Healthy People 2020 is to “engage multiple sectors to take actions to strengthen policies and improve practices that are driven by the best available evidence and knowledge,” policymakers should not put forth obstacles that will make this engagement difficult. Federal agencies and health experts need to communicate with multiple sectors to help identify critical research, evaluation, and data collection needs.

Conclusion

The success that Americans have experienced in health care and the progress in medicine thus far is largely a result of industry-physician collaboration and government/industry funded research. Accordingly, while health care reform is being implemented and institutions, agencies, and academic medical centers consider new policies, these stakeholders should consider policies that will enhance the collaboration of government, academia, and industry to continue encouraging collaborations across sectors that will help our country meet the goals set by Healthy People 2020.

Recent proposals from academic medical centers, institutions, and agencies have threatened the ability of the private sector to work with the government or academia. In light of initiatives such as Healthy People 2020, which recognize the need to engage multiple sectors, these parties should seriously reconsider the limitations they have placed on their faculty and staff, and other counterproductive measures. Leaving out stakeholders such as industry and cutting off communication between the private sector and government or academia will make achieving the mission of Healthy People 2020 difficult, and could end up hurting Americans instead of helping them.