Appendix B. National Objectives and Goals

B1. Healthy People 2020 Objectives

For three decades, Healthy People has provided a comprehensive set of national 10-year health promotion and disease prevention objectives aimed at improving the health of all Americans.¹ It is grounded in the principle that establishing objectives and providing benchmarks to track and monitor progress over time can motivate, guide, and focus action.

Healthy People 2020 (HP2020) continues in the tradition of its ambitious, yet achievable, 10-year agenda for improving the Nation’s health. HP2020 is the result of a multiyear process that reflects input from a diverse group of individuals and organizations. HP2020 is organized into 42 topic areas, with more than 1,200 measures designed drive action that will support its 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.
• Promote quality of life, healthy development, and healthy behaviors across all life stages.

The topic area, Sexually Transmitted Diseases, contains objectives and measures related to STDs. Baselines, HP2020 targets, and annual progress toward the targets are reported in Table B1. The year 2020 targets for the diseases addressed in this report are as follows: P&S syphilis (males), 6.8 cases per 100,000 population; P&S syphilis (females), 1.4 cases per 100,000 population; congenital syphilis, 9.1 cases per 100,000 live births; gonorrhea (females aged 15–44 years), 257.0 cases per 100,000 population and gonorrhea (males aged 15–44 years), 198.0 cases per 100,000 population. The majority of the STD-related HP2020 targets were set using a standard percentage improvement with a standard default of a “10 percent improvement over the baseline.”

B2. Government Performance and Results Act of 1993

The Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) of 1993 was enacted by Congress to increase confidence in the capability of the federal government to increase the effectiveness and accountability of federal programs, to improve service delivery, to provide federal agencies a uniform tool for internal management, and to help Congress make decisions.

GPRA requires each agency to have a performance plan with long-term outcomes and annual, measurable performance goals and to report on these plans annually, comparing results with annual goals. There are two GPRA goals for STD: reducing PID and eliminating congenital syphilis. Each of these goals has specific measures of progress, which are outlined in Table B2.

1 U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Healthy People 2020 Web site. [Accessed on 9/8/2015] http://healthypeople.gov/2020/default.aspx.

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