Healthy People 2010 Is On Target to Promote Well-being

By Kate Liebsle, Contributing Writer

When it comes to getting healthy and staying that way, Americans don’t have a great track record. We overeat, over smoke and under exercise. To encourage changes in our behavior, the United States Department of Health and Human Services developed Healthy People, a nationwide health promotion and disease prevention plan to encourage healthy living.

Healthy People 2010 is the third in the series of 10-year initiatives which started in January 2000. It is composed of 467 specific objectives, 28 goals, and two main goals to be achieved by 2010. A recent report showed that 49 percent of the objectives have moved toward their targets, but only 10 percent have met or exceeded their goals.

The Healthy People program sets national goals, yet looks to communities and individuals for ways to meet them. The program allows each participant (organization, health agency, community groups) the flexibility to create ways to achieve better health. Tricia Schlechte, Missouri Healthy People 2010 coordinator member, and policy and intervention analyst with the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services, describes it as “a framework to help achieve improved health for all Americans.”

While it is not a mandate, a grant nor contract-awarding initiative, many states and communities, including Kansas, Missouri and Kansas City, MO, have embraced some parts of the concept. They have either developed programs directly related to Healthy People, or are using the objectives and goals as a model when developing their own programs.

Choosing to create a health initiative specific to the needs of Kansas Citians, the city of Kansas City, MO’s Health Commission developed the Community Health Improvement Program (CHIP) in 2005. While not directly tied to Healthy People 2010, CHIP focuses on objectives that are similar to those in the national initiative. Eight areas where Kansas City health leaders want improvement are primary prevention, tobacco use, environmental health and safety, mental health and addictive disorders, women’s/infants’/children’s health, chronic disease secondary prevention, oral health, communicable disease and disaster response.

Instead of focusing on measurable goals, CHIP suggests ways to help identify resources, partnerships and public policies to support health efforts. However, like Healthy People, it’s up to the individual to take action. In the introduction of CHIP, former Mayor Kay Barnes described the initiative as an approach to “help our residents focus on ways individuals can take responsibility for their health and on the social environment’s contribution to health.”

The CHIP and latest Community Health Assessment reports that show progress on targeted areas can be found on the city’s Web site: www.kcmo.org/health/.

The state of Kansas developed Healthy Kansans 2010 which directly links to the federal initiative. The Kansas version developed by a wide-ranging group of people connected to the health industry is a structured program with a state reporting system. The group identified three overlapping issues affecting multiple Leading Health Indicators:

• Reducing and Eliminating Health and Disease Disparities;
• System Interventions to Address Social Determinants of Health and Early Disease Prevention;
• Risk Identification and Intervention for Women, Children and Adolescents.

From these areas they chose 10 leading health indicators ripe for improvement:

Physical Activity, Overweight and Obesity, Tobacco Use, Substance Abuse, Responsible Sexual Behavior, Mental Health, Injury and Violence, Environmental Quality, Immunization, and Access to Health Care.

Kansas also tracks progress, “but, we realize that there are more than 400 objectives,” said Brandon Skidmore, manager of chronic disease grants for the Kansas Department of Health and Environment. “That’s why we chose 10. If we see improvement in these, we’ll know in a general sense that we’re making progress.”

The state of Missouri chose a different approach. While there is not a state-sponsored program or a state report like Kansas, the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services uses the Healthy People 2010 objectives as targets for programs, Schlechte said, and encourages other organizations to look at the objectives for their goal-setting.   Currently, the state is conducting a review to see how program objectives are comparing to the national objectives.  

Healthy People 2010 expects the individual, whether through a community-based outreach effort or a workplace program, to work on his or her health, Schlechte said. The initiative is about encouraging and challenging organizations and individuals to change their behaviors.

The Healthy People program also responds to change: every decade since the latter part of the twentieth century, a team of experts set 10-year goals for the nation’s health. And that makes sense, Schlechte said, because as science, medicine and other factors change, so should health goals.

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