Healthy People 2020 Overview of Health Disparities

An overarching goal of Healthy People 2020 (HP2020) is to achieve health equity, eliminate disparities, and improve the health of all groups. To provide an overview of health disparities for the Healthy People 2020 Final Review, changes in disparities during the HP2020 tracking period were assessed for a subset of objectives by selected population characteristics. These population characteristics were: sex, race and ethnicity, educational attainment, family income, disability status, and geographic location. Data showing the percentage of objectives in each of the disparities change categories (decrease, little or no detectable change, and increase) are provided below in an interactive chart and table, and can be filtered by HP2020 topic area(s) and population characteristic(s). If multiple topic areas are chosen, the data will be combined across these selections.

Changes in disparities for objectives during the tracking period were assessed for each population characteristic using two time points, defined as the baseline and final year(s) of data. Note that the baseline and final years for each objective in the disparities analysis do not necessarily correspond to the HP2020 baseline and final years for the total population that were used in the HP2020 Progress Table or the Progress by Population Group analysis to evaluate target attainment. To see data for additional years, visit the HP2020 website. Information on the methods and calculations for the final disparities data is available in the footnotes below and in the accompanying Technical Notes for the Healthy People 2020 Overview of Health Disparities.

Data.CDC.gov is an open platform that allows the agency to share data in more accessible way. Users can view information about the dataset, including content characterization and metadata, and download the dataset in different file formats. It also provides an API to allow users to connect, filter, query, and aggregate the data programmatically.

Footnotes

The baseline and final years for each objective in the disparities analysis do not necessarily correspond to the baseline and final years for the total population that were used in the HP2020 Progress Table or the HP2020 Progress by Population Group analysis. Additionally, the number of years between the baseline and final years for the disparities analysis varies by objective, reflecting differences in data collection periods across data sources used in HP2020 and population group availability for specific objectives. The baseline and final years used in the disparities analysis are available for each objective in the downloadable data file.
The change in disparities for HP2020 objectives is defined as the difference between the disparity measure at the final data point and the disparity measure at the baseline data point. The disparity measure used is either the summary rate ratio for population characteristics with three or more groups or the maximal rate ratio for population characteristics with two groups. Data for some population groups did not meet the criteria for inclusion for specific objectives in the disparities analysis (for example, if data for the group were not available at both the baseline and final data point). See the corresponding Technical Notes for the Healthy People 2020 Overview of Health Disparities for more information on these disparity measures and the criteria for how population groups, baseline, and final data years were selected for the disparities analysis. Specific population groups included in the disparities analysis for each objective are included in the downloadable data file.
Changes in disparities in either the summary rate ratio or the maximal rate ratio were reported using three categories: decrease, little or no detectable change, or increase. These categories were defined based on the following criteria:
- Decrease: Difference in the disparity measure between the final and baseline data year was negative and statistically significant when this could be assessed, or negative and greater than or equal to 0.10 (absolute value) when statistical significance could not be assessed.
- Little or no detectable change: Difference in the disparity measure between the final and baseline data year was not statistically significant when this could be assessed, or less than 0.10 (absolute value) when statistical significance could not be assessed.
- Increase: Difference in the disparity measure between the final and baseline data year was positive and statistically significant when this could be assessed, or positive and greater than or equal to 0.10 when statistical significance could not be assessed.

Suggested Citation

National Center for Health Statistics. Healthy People 2020 Overview of Health Disparities. Healthy People 2020 Final Review. 2022. DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.15620/cdc:111173.