Healthy People

The Healthy People initiative is designed to guide national health promotion and disease prevention efforts to improve the health of the nation. Released by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) every decade since 1980, Healthy People identifies science-based objectives with targets to monitor progress and motivate and focus action. Healthy People has established benchmarks in order to:

• Identify nationwide health improvement priorities.
• Increase public awareness and understanding of the determinants of health, disease, and disability and the opportunities for progress.
• Provide measurable objectives and goals that are applicable at the national, State, and local levels.
• Engage multiple sectors to take actions to strengthen policies and improve practices that are driven by the best available evidence and knowledge.
• Identify critical research, evaluation, and data collection needs.

Healthy People 2030 is the fifth iteration of the initiative and continues in this tradition with about 350 core objectives to be tracked over the decade.