Resolutions for a Healthier Nation: The New Healthy People 2020 Goals

A new year is right around the corner, and it seems like everyone is setting goals and resolutions for what they hope to achieve in 2011 (and beyond). So it’s especially fitting that earlier in the month, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services unveiled its goals for national health as part of the Healthy People 2020 initiative. For the past several decades, Healthy People objectives have served as benchmarks for where the country’s health should be at the end of each ten-year period. In fact, our Women’s Health Report Card uses a number of Healthy People targets as benchmarks for women’s health status indicators. The grades we assign the nation and states are a reflection of how close they come to meeting a given benchmark—all states, for instance, meet the Healthy People 2010 target of 50% of women over 50 reporting that they’ve ever received a colorectal cancer screening and accordingly all receive “Satisfactory” grades. 

Unfortunately, this is one of the few examples where goals for women’s health are actually being met. In 2010, the nation misses the benchmark for 23 of the Report Card’s 26 women’s health status indicators. While this is disheartening and shows the vast room for improvement in women’s health, the news is not all grim!  First, our new health care law (the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act) promises to improve access to coverage and high-quality health care for millions of women—the law has enormous potential to improve women’s health status over time. In addition, the new Healthy People 2020 initiative includes some promising improvements that focus increased attention and efforts on areas that are critical to women’s health.  For the first time, Healthy People includes topic areas for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) health, adolescent health, and the health of older adults. And a new category on the social determinants of health emphasizes how social environments and factors (e.g. neighborhood resources, workplace safety, housing quality, educational opportunities) influence health outcomes. With regard to specific targets, in some cases Healthy People 2020 raises the bar for women’s health—the benchmark for women receiving a Pap test has been raised from 90% (for Healthy People 2010) to 93% (Healthy People 2020) and the target for the breast cancer death rate has moved from 22.3 deaths to 20.6 deaths per 100,000 population.  On the other hand, some of the Healthy People 2020 targets are actually lower than those set for 2010—a reflection of different methods used for setting the targets—in areas where there has been little or no progress (and in some cases, decline). The Healthy People 2020 target for unintended pregnancies, for instance, is to increase the proportion of pregnancies that are intended to 56%; the target for the previous decade was 70%. The new target for obesity is to reduce the proportion of adults who are obese to 30.6%, while the Healthy People 2010 target was 15%. We’re looking forward to measuring progress towards this new set of goals in the next iteration of our Women’s Health Report Card.