Healthy People 2010 builds on initiatives pursued over the past two decades. The latest of these, Healthy People 2000: National Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Objectives,1 released in 1990, identified health improvement goals and objectives to be reached by the year 2000. The Healthy People 2010 initiative continues in this tradition as a catalyst to improve health for all Americans during the first decade of the 21st century. Many of the objectives that were in Healthy People 2000 also appear in Healthy People 2010, though some have been modified or adapted to reflect improvements in methodology and changes in the focus of public health policy.

Healthy People 20102 presents 467 objectives to improve the health of Americans by the year 2010. Because these objectives are national, not solely Federal, the achievement of these objectives is dependent in part on the ability of health agencies at all levels of the government and on nongovernmental organizations to assess objective progress. Systematically collecting, analyzing, interpreting, disseminating, and using health data is essential to understanding the health status of a population, to assessing progress, and to planning effective prevention programs. Therefore, data are the foundation of Healthy People objectives. Although the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services takes the lead role in national health data collection, it is only one partner within the larger structure necessary to collect information on the status and factors affecting the health of the population. The purpose of Tracking Healthy People 2010 is to provide technical information so the many partners in this effort understand how the data are derived and the major statistical issues affecting the interpretation of the statistics.

The production of this document was made possible through collaboration with the Work Group Coordinators for each of the focus areas (see Appendix A).

Tracking Healthy People 2010 is organized into three sections.

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Part A: General Data Issues discusses issues that affect many objectives. This section includes important U.S. and international statistical practices that affect the definitions for the objectives and the ability to collect relevant information. One example is the recommendation to change the age-adjustment standard population weights for mortality and other data from various standards previously used to the year 2000 U.S. standard population weights. Appendix C presents a comparison of rates for the age-adjusted mortality objectives adjusted to the previously used 1940 standard and the 2000 standard.

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Part B: Operational Definitions provides definitions for each of the Healthy People 2010 objectives. The purpose of these definitions is to give the necessary technical information so the statistics can be reproduced for the national populations and comparable statistics can be calc ted for other populations. If complete information for an objective definition is not available at the time of publication, the reader is directed to experts who can provide additional information.

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Data for the national Healthy People 2010 objectives come from 190 data sources. Of these, there are 23 data sources that each are used to track 5 or more objectives. These 23 sources are responsible for tracking more than three-fifths of the Healthy People 2010 objectives. Part C:  Major Health Data Sources describes characteristics of the 23 major data systems used for Healthy People 2010. These characteristics are important considerations for others trying to develop similar data sources or trying to use the data sources for other purposes, such as the calculation of statistics for other select populations.

Appendices A through H provide information on the Healthy People 2010 Work Group Coordinators, abbreviations and acronyms used in Healthy People 2010, comparisons of age-adjusted death rates using the 1940 and 2000 standard population, ICD-9 and ICD-9-CM codes used in the objectives, crosswalks between the Healthy People 2000 and Healthy People 2010 objectives, and a list of the Healthy People 2010 objectives that are Leading Health Indicators.3

References