DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES
Meeting of: Secretary's Council on National Health Promotion and Disease
Prevention Objectives for 2010
September 12, 2000, Proceedings
Agenda Item: Welcome and Overview--David Satcher
DR. SATCHER: Even though we still have a few people missing who are scheduled to be here, we're going to get started.
I am David Satcher, Assistant Secretary for Health and the Surgeon General. But today, what is more important, I'm Vice Chair of the Secretary's Council, which has been advising us on Healthy People 2010. This is actually the fourth meeting of that Council. It's been a very productive Council in terms of developing goals and objectives for Healthy People 2010.
The Secretary regrets that she is not able to be here. Her schedule has changed sort of dramatically in recent weeks, as she has been asked to represent the United States at the Olympics in Sydney, Australia. I did my part. I volunteered to go in her place, but she decided she wanted to take this task on herself. So she's not going to be with us, but she does send her greetings and her sincere appreciation to all of you who have worked so hard.
PARTICIPANT: What you call a hardship assignment.
DR. SATCHER: Right, exactly. But we are really delighted to have all of you here. What I want to do first is go around the table and have each one of you just briefly introduce yourself. Why don't we start?
DR. WYKOFF: I'm Randy Wykoff, the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Health for Disease Prevention and Health Promotion.
DR. MALONE: I'm Beverly Malone, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Health. I work with Dr. Satcher and Nikki Lurie.
DR. FLEMING: Good morning. I'm Dan Fleming. I am the Deputy Director for Science and Public Health at CDC.
DR. SUYDAM: Good morning. I'm Linda Suydam. I am the Senior Associate Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration.
DR. WINDOM: I'm Bob Windom, an old ASH that still has a little fire left.
DR. BRANDT: I'm Ed Brandt, and my fire is burning, too.
DR. MASON: Jim Mason.
DR. RICHMOND: Julius Richmond. I am currently at the Harvard Medical School, a professor of health policy emeritus, but not retired.
DR. LURIE: Nikki Lurie, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Health.
DR. KIRSCHSTEIN: Ruth Kirschstein, Principal Deputy Director of NIH.
DR. KANG: Jeff Kang. I'm the Chief Clinical Officer from HCFA, sitting in for Nancy-Ann Min DeParle.
DR. BRODERICK: My name is Rick Broderick. I'm the Deputy Director, Office of Public Health for the Indian Health Service.
DR. SATCHER: Very good. We have quite a few people in the room, and there will be a time later in the day when people who want to will be able to comment on today's proceedings.
I do want to take just a minute and single out Dr. Mason. Jim Mason is a former Assistant Secretary for Health, but also former Director of the CDC. This is his first meeting with the Council, because he has been very busy doing medical missionary work in Africa for the past three years. We are very proud of the work that he has done, but in order for him to become a full-fledged member of the Council, he has to be sworn in. He has been through this before, but he is becoming a federal employee once again, even though for a brief period of time, in the category of a Special Government Employee.
So, Jim, if you will come forward. After that, I am going to ask the other Assistant Secretaries for Health to come up for a picture.
(Whereupon, Dr. James Mason is sworn in.)
Dr. Lee is going to join us by phone.
(Inaudible remarks)
Welcome, Phil. We have just finished swearing
Dr. Mason in as a member of the Council. This is his first meeting with the Council, so we are delighted to have him.
DR. LEE: Welcome back, Jim.
DR. MASON: Thank you. Thank you, Phil.
DR. SATCHER: Let me say, I think this is a very important meeting for many reasons. I think it is important, in that we have just recently launched Healthy People 2010, but I also think that it comes at a very important time. It is during the height of the campaign. Many people are wondering what is going to happen after the election.
I think the message here, of course, is that this is an activity, a program that has gone on through many different Administrations. It has had very strong bipartisan support, and we're determined that it will continue to have strong bipartisan support and move forward and serve the interests of the health of the American people. So it is a good time for this meeting to take place, in that it is our way of recommitting ourselves to this program as a continuing program through many different Administrations, and as a bipartisan program.
Many of you were with us in January when we launched Healthy People 2010. It was quite an event. We had a blizzard; the government was officially closed down, and yet there were 1500 people who had already come to the hotel the night before. We went forward with Healthy People 2010, the launching, and had really an outstanding launch. Several people joined us the second day.
We had, in addition to Secretary Shalala, former Secretary Louis Sullivan, was present, and four of the former Assistant Secretaries for Health, including Drs. Lee, Richmond, DuVal and Windom. I think it was just a really outstanding launch for Healthy People 2010. We have an opportunity today, I think, to continue to move forward.
(A series of lantern slides is shown.) I just want to remind you, this is Healthy People 2010, and this is a document that was distributed on the occasion of the launching of Healthy People 2010. It built on Healthy People 1990 and Healthy People 2000.
The next slide compares in some ways Healthy People 2000 and Healthy People 2010. We built on all of the efforts over the years at reducing disparities in health, but moved to another level in setting the goal of eliminating disparities in health, an initiative that started in 1988 with President Clinton's announcement from the White House and our Department's commitment in this area. So this is one of the major goals of Healthy People 2010.
This, I'm sure, will surprise some of you. There were 319 objectives in Healthy People 2000. I said we were going to try to cut it down in Healthy People 2010. We ended up with 467 objectives, and that is not really all bad. It's hard to communicate 467 objectives to the American people, but the fact of the matter is, every time we have a new organization or a new agency commitment in an area like disability, which we had not had before, we bring in new sets of objectives. But we also bring in a lot of people committed to work in this area.
I think that's what happened. We had six new focus areas for Healthy People 2010, from 22 to 28, areas like the public health infrastructure, chronic renal disease, visual and hearing disorders. These were new focus areas for Healthy People 2010, bringing in a lot of new commitment and a lot of new resources.
The new thing about Healthy People 2010, which I think is so important -- and I distributed these bookmarks to each one of you -- is that for the first time, we developed a set of Leading Health Indicators, working with the Institute of Medicine, reviewing all of the objectives that we had developed. We tried to settle on a few indicators that we could communicate directly to the American people and that, like leading economic indicators, that we could monitor over a period of at least 10 years. Each one of these Leading Health Indicators has at least two or three measurable objectives that we are going to be following.
What has really helped from my perspective, as one who communicates a lot directly with the American people -- the Leading Health Indicators have really helped in that communication. I think we are going to find as we move through the years that throughout the country people are working on various objectives, if we can keep everybody in the country focused on the 10 Leading Health Indicators.
I divide these 10 Leading Health Indicators into lifestyle indicators and health system indicators. In the area of lifestyle, we focus on physical activity, overweight and obesity, substance abuse, responsible sexual behavior, and especially tobacco use.
As I said before, by saying lifestyle, we don't mean that these are just individual responsibilities, because there are a lot of community responsibilities in these lifestyle objectives. What happens in our schools; what happens in our communities in terms of making facilities available for physical activity; whether or not we sell cigarettes to children -- a lot of community responsibilities in the lifestyle objectives.
And of course, under the health system objectives, we have included mental health, injury and violence prevention, environmental quality, immunizations, and access to health care. I believe that the Institute of Medicine and the people of the committee who worked with them did a great job of developing these 10 Leading Health Indicators.
So that is the approach that we decided to take, and that was the nature of our launching in January 2000.