The Healthy People program is structured to lead in improvement of the national health and efforts to prevent disease thus improve the nation’s health. Since 1980, the US Department of Health and Human Services has released reports every decade, identifying science-based objectives with targets to evaluate progress, encourage, and concentrate action. Furthermore, the project outlines national health improvement priorities by focusing on different sectors. Healthy people, for example, focus on fostering physical, mental, emotional, and behavioral development in children and adolescents by guiding parents and teachers on many ways they can participate in the growth. They must, for example, provide supportive care, ensure that they get enough sleep, and encourage them to engage in physical activity. The program also focuses on drug and alcohol misuse, affecting more than twenty million adults in the United States, to improve health priorities. As a result, it ensures that those who are impacted receive appropriate treatment and develop methods to avoid substance usage. Similarly, the effort helps women improve their health by planning their pregnancies and encouraging the use of birth control and family planning services under the Healthy Improvement section.
Additionally, the Healthy People project raises public knowledge of the variables contributing to diseases, health, and disability. It also provides solutions for progress. For example, in the case of mental health, it focuses on the prevention, screening, evaluation, and treatment of all patients to improve population health and quality of life. Other disorders that the project focuses on include cancer, which is addressed by encouraging screening and teaching people about prevention techniques, increasing the chances of survivorship for such patients. Different prevention techniques are also incorporated into the projects, such as building programs to assist addicts in quitting tobacco, increasing HPV vaccination, and educating on various healthy dietary options. In connection to heart disease, which is the leading cause of death in the United States, the Healthy People Initiative helps people address risk factors such as excessive cholesterol and blood pressure by providing therapies to ensure people are prepared for cardiovascular emergencies. Also, by teaching people alternative ways to recognize the acute symptoms of diseases, more people will receive the therapy they require.
Furthermore, the Healthy People Initiative guarantees that the objectives and goals are measurable and meaningful on a national, state, and local level. It indicates that the effort tracks progress toward a goal over time and defines non-measurable targets. As a result, the goals should be central and linked to the decade’s plans, as they demonstrate high-priority public health issues and are related to evidence-based interventions. For example, one of the primary objectives is to have up-to-date baseline data, which must be dated no earlier than 2015. (Healthy people 2030, n.d). When data is valid, it has a degree of fluctuation, and it is provided for at least three periods over a decade. Furthermore, the data sources meet the primary objectives by determining whether the target has been completed or surpassed, whether there is data beyond the initial baseline data, any improvement, changes, and whether the target is deteriorating.
The Healthy People Initiative engages a wide range of sectors by encouraging them to take action, enhance policies, and improve practices based on the most up-to-date knowledge and data. For example, it focuses on community organizations that provide preventative health care services and ensures that businesses protect their employees in various ways, such as using protective gear. Similarly, the project focuses on health insurance, based on studies showing that most persons from racial and ethnic minorities, those with less education, and those from low-income backgrounds do not have insurance. As a result, the program explores measures to ensure vital health care services, such as dental, medical, and prescription drug coverage, by lowering copays. It also addresses environmental health by laying out techniques for limiting people’s exposure to dangerous chemicals in water, air, soil, food, and other household materials (Benz et al.,2013). Environmental pollutants must be addressed to build rules and legislation that make it simple to avoid serious health problems and deaths.
The conditions in which individuals are born, grow, reside, work, and age are known as social determinants of health, and they have an impact on an extensive range of health, functional, and life quality outcomes and hazards. Economic stability, for example, is an area that focuses on measures to assist people in generating enough money to meet their health needs, such as healthcare, food, and housing. People learn about employment programs and other possibilities when the economy is stable, which helps them find and stay at work, lowering poverty and boosting their well-being. Education access and quality is the second topic under social determinants, and it focuses on expanding educational opportunities and helping children and adolescents perform better. Most low-income children face various sorts of social prejudice, which impacts their reading and performance, making them less likely to graduate and obtain high-paying employment. It means that developing solutions that provide equal opportunities for all students, such as assisting families in paying for college and other long-term advantages, is critical.
The third domain is healthcare access and quality to ensure that everyone in the United States has access to high-quality, timely healthcare. People are encouraged to acquire insurance coverage, and efforts are in place to raise rates, ensuring that most people access essential healthcare services like chronic illness treatment and preventive care. The program also provides that all environments and neighborhoods are focused on improving health and safety by implementing intervention and policy changes that can reduce health and safety hazards under the area and built environment section. Settings, for example, have created pathways for people to stroll and ride their bikes. The final domain is the social and communal environment, which emphasizes how individuals can obtain the social support they need in the areas where they learn, work, play, and live (Braveman et al.,2011). This area is concerned with the hazards and problems that people cannot control and which harm their safety. Finally, social determinants of health have an essential role in promoting health and reducing health inequities.
References
Braveman, P., Egerter, S., & Williams, D. R. (2011). The social determinants of health: coming of age. Annual review of public health, 32, 381-398.
Benz, J., Blakey, C., Oppenheimer, C. C., Scherer, H., & Robinson, W. T. (2013). The Healthy People Initiative. Journal of Public Health Management and Practice, 19(2), 103-109.
Healthy people 2030. (n.d.). https://health.gov/healthypeople
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