Healthy People 2000

In September 1990, the Department of Health and Human Services released Healthy People 2000: National Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Objectives, a strategy for improving the health of Americans by the end of the century. Healthy People 2000 contains 319 unduplicated main objectives grouped into 22 priority areas. Because some priority areas share identical objectives, there is a total of 376 objectives including duplicates.

The first 21 areas pertain to health promotion, health protection, and preventive services. Area 22, Surveillance and Data Systems, addresses the development of an infrastructure to track the objectives and to identify and evaluate emerging public health issues at the national, State, and local levels.

NCHS is responsible for monitoring the Nation’s progress toward the objectives, using NCHS and other data sources. Progress reports are published annually in the Healthy People 2000 Review series.

Although the objectives are national, their achievement will be accomplished primarily through State and local efforts. Thus, building State capacity to evaluate need and assess progress is an important component of the NCHS Year 2000 program. State support activities will include training, technical assistance, development of software products for State and local health agencies, and, as available, funding.

Regularly scheduled Healthy People 2000 progress reviews provide the Assistant Secretary for Health with a means to track the objectives and manage their implementation. The agency with lead responsibility for the given priority area presents the review, assisted by members of the interagency work group for that priority area and invited State agency and private organization representatives.

Specific population progress reviews document data issues, barriers, and strategies to achieving the objectives, as well as implementation efforts underway to reach the specific population targets.

Healthy People 2000

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