Healthy People 2020: The Importance of Community Outreach, Public Services, and Education

Healthy People 2020: The Importance of Community Outreach, Public Services, and Education

Healthy People 2020 Initiative

Improving the health of Americans by providing comprehensive health promotion and disease prevention: sound familiar? As you probably recall, that is the overall goal of the national initiative

Healthy people 2020. This initiative contains comprehensive goals and objectives used by the

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and other government agencies to develop and evaluate

programs designed to promote health and prevent disease in specific patient populations.

Healthy People 2020 Initiative

The Healthy People 2020 initiative focuses on determinants of health. What are determinants of

health? They are those factors that contribute to an individual’s health such as genetics, lifestyle,

gender, physical environment, education, race, ethnicity. income, access to health care, and

exposure to violence.

Monitoring Health Status

Healthy people 2020 monitors these determinants to help improve the health status of individuals, families, and communities. How is health status monitored? It is monitored by evaluating data. such

as birth and death rates, morbidity associated with certain conditions, life expectancy, healthcare costs,

risk factors, insurance, healthcare visits, and a variety of other indicators.

Analyzing data can be quite complicated and complex because many factors can be intertwined. For example, if you want to analyze diabetes morbidity, factors such as genetics, lifestyle, healthcare access. and income level may all be intertwined.

Outcome data is also use to evaluate effectiveness of community health programs.