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HP 2010 Midcourse Review

Founded on data that enable progress and trends to be tracked, Healthy People 2010 provides a set of 10-year evidence-based objectives for improving the health of all Americans.  Its two overarching goals are to increase the quality and years of healthy life and to eliminate health disparities.  Healthy People 2010 covers 28 focus areas with 467 specific objectives.

Midway through the decade, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services conducts a midcourse review to assess the status of the national objectives.  Through the Midcourse Review the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Federal agencies, and other experts assess the data trends during the first half of the decade, consider new science and available data, and if appropriate, revise the objectives to ensure that Healthy People 2010 remains current, accurate, and relevant to public health priorities.

The changes to the Healthy People 2010 objectives take the form of establishing baselines and targets for developmental objectives; changing the wording of objectives and subobjectives; deleting objectives and subobjectives; adding of new subobjectives; and revising baseline and targets.

For example, in the case of developmental objectives, "developmental" denotes those objectives and subobjectives that lack baseline data and targets.  At the launch of Healthy People 2010, a number of objectives were developmental:  They provided a vision for the desired outcome or health status, but no national baseline data were available.  As stated in Healthy People 2010, "Most developmental objectives have a potential data source with a reasonable expectation of data points by the year 2004 to facilitate setting 2010 targets in the mid-decade review.  Developmental objectives with no baseline [or data source] at the midcourse will be dropped."  Although some developmental objectives with no baseline data or data source were deleted as part of the Midcourse Review, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the agencies that serve as the leads for the Healthy People 2010 initiative will consider ways to ensure these emerging public health issues retain prominence despite their current lack of data.

Many developmental objectives have secured a national data source or national baseline data and are now measurable.  Developmental objectives with no national baseline data source were deleted as part of the Midcourse Review assessment.  Those developmental objectives that remain developmental through the Midcourse Review assessment and are not deleted have a data source identified for them.

The Midcourse Review has a number of components, as described below:

  • The foreword written by the Assistant Secretary for Health, John O. Agwunobi, provides a brief overview of the document.
    [PDF version - 240 kb]
  • The Executive Summary provides a detailed overview of the Healthy People 2010 Midcourse Review, addresses how the Healthy People 2010 and the Midcourse Review relate to some other public health efforts, and summarizes progress toward achieving the Healthy People 2010 goals and objectives.
    [PDF version - 2.7 MB]
  • The 28 specific Focus Area chapters highlight changes that were made to specific objectives, progress toward the 2010 targets by objective, disparities among populations by objective, and efforts to advance the health of the nation within the Focus Area.
  • The appendices include a list of the Healthy People 2010 Steering Committee members, a list of the Workgroup Coordinators for each Focus Area, the technical appendix, a list of objectives and subobjectives deleted, and a list of the Healthy People 2010 objectives and subobjectives used to track the Leading Health Indicators.
  • View comments submitted during our public comment submission period that led to the changes to Healthy People 2010 at the Midcourse Review.

 
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