Healthy People 2020

In December 2010, the Department of Health and Human Services launched Healthy People 2020, which has four 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; and
• Promote quality of life, healthy development, and healthy behaviors across all life stages.

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.

Additional Resources

• Topic Areas at a Glance
• Leading Health Indicators at a Glance
• Progress Reviews