In January 2000, the Department of Health and Human Services launched Healthy People 2010, a comprehensive, nationwide health promotion and disease prevention agenda. Healthy People 2010 contains 467 objectives designed to serve as a road map for improving the health of all people in the United States during the first decade of the 21st century.
Healthy People 2010 builds on initiatives pursued over the past two decades. Two overarching goals--increase quality and years of healthy life, and eliminate health disparities--served as a guide for developing objectives that will actually measure progress. The objectives are organized in 28 focus areas, each representing an important public health area. Each objective has a target for improvements to be achieved by the year 2010. A limited set of the objectives, known as the Leading Health Indicators, are intended to help everyone more easily understand the importance of health promotion and disease prevention and to encourage wide participation in improving health in the next decade. These Indicators were chosen based on their ability to motivate action, the availability of data to measure their progress, and their relevance as broad public health issues.
Midway through the decade, the Healthy People 2010 midcourse review was conducted to assess the status of national health objectives. The midcourse review is the process through which HHS, Federal agencies, and other experts across the Nation assessed the data trends during the first half of the decade, considered new science and available data, and made changes to ensure that Healthy People 2010 remains current, accurate, and relevant, while concurrently assessing emerging public health priorities. Public comments on the changes at the midcourse to the Healthy People 2010 objectives and subobjectives were solicited in August and September 2005. To the extent possible, Healthy People 2010 objectives referenced on Quick Health Data Online reflect any revisions or updates that were made as a result of the midcourse review. Additional information on the midcourse review may be found online at: http://www.healthypeople.gov/Data/midcourse/.
To further assist users in assessing the extent to which their local areas have reached Healthy People 2010 objectives, Quick Health Data Online maintains a separate data category titled HP 2010. This category, organized by Healthy People 2010 objective number, highlights data that may be used to measure Healthy People 2010 objectives. Data are available at the state and county levels, as indicated. Notes regarding the specific data presented in the HP 2010 data category may be found elsewhere in this documentation.
More information on Healthy People 2010 is available from CDC Wonder and from the Healthy People 2010 website.