Healthy People 2010
Healthy People 2010 is a compilation of disease prevention and health promotion objectives for the nation to achieve during the first decade of the 21st century. Created by experts from inside and outside of government, it identifies a wide range of public health priorities and couples them with measurable objectives. The Healthy People 2010 initiative includes 467 objectives designed to increase the quality and years of healthy life of all Americans by eliminating health disparities.
Twenty-nine of the indicators selected for the 2008 Colorado Health Report Card are among the objectives included in Healthy People 2010. These indicators allow us to compare Colorado’s performance not only against other states but also against targets developed by experts in the public health community. A few of these targets such as teen fertility have already been achieved in Colorado and the United States. Regrettably, most have not. At the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, staff of the Healthy People 2010 initiative are in the process of developing a revised set of objectives for 2020.
In some cases Healthy People 2010 targets are for age ranges different from the indicators used in this report. For example, Healthy People 2010 objective 22-1 is “Reduce the proportion of adults who engage in no leisure-time physical activity.” The target is 20 percent for persons ages 18 and over (i.e., 80 percent should engage in some leisure-time physical activity each month). In this Report Card we have reported physical activity separately for adults 18-64 and adults 65 and over. Not surprisingly, adults 18-64 are more likely to engage in leisure-time physical activity (84 percent) than adults 65 and over (75 percent). Later in this report we show the Healthy People 2010 target value (80 percent) on the working-age adult and older adult physical activity fact sheets, noting that the target applies to a broader age range in Appendix I. Similarly, the Healthy People 2010 target for fruit and vegetable consumption is for 75 percent of people ages two and over to consume at least two servings of fruit and three servings of vegetables, at least one of which is dark green or orange. We have shown the 75 percent fruit and vegetable target for children, adolescents and adults even though this target was not developed specifically for each of these life cycle phases.
Healthy People 2010