In January 2000, the Department of Health and Human Services launched Healthy People 2010, a comprehensive, nationwide health promotion and disease prevention agenda. Healthy People 2010 contains 467 objectives designed to serve as a road map for improving the health of all people in the United States during the first decade of the 21st century.

Healthy People 2010 builds on similar initiatives pursued over the past two decades. Two overarching goals--increase quality and years of healthy life, and eliminate health disparities--served as a guide for developing objectives that will actually measure progress. The objectives are organized in 28 focus areas, each representing an important public health area. Each objective has a target for improvements to be achieved by the year 2010. A limited set of the objectives, known as the Leading Health Indicators, are intended to help everyone more easily understand the importance of health promotion and disease prevention and to encourage wide participation in improving health in the next decade. These Indicators were chosen based on their ability to motivate action, the availability of data to measure their progress, and their relevance as broad public health issues.

NCHS is responsible for coordinating the effort to monitor the Nation s progress toward the objectives, using data from NCHS data systems as well as many other data sources. National data are gathered from more than 150 different data sources, from more than seven Federal Government Departments (Health and Human Services, Commerce, Education, Justice, Labor, Transportation, and the Environmental Protection Agency), and from voluntary and private non-governmental organizations. To the extent appropriate, data for the objective are provided for subgroups defined by relevant dimensions (such as sociodemographic subgroups of the population, health status, or major industrial classifications).

Data are made available through DATA2010, an interactive database system accessible through the NCHS web site and the CDC WONDER system. Spreadsheet files containing Healthy People 2010-related data--including Leading Health Indicators, Selected Mortality Objectives, Selected Natality Objectives, and Health Status Indicators, by States are also available for downloading through the NCHS web site.

Because these objectives are national, not solely Federal, the achievement of these objectives is dependent in part on the ability of health agencies at all levels of government and on non-governmental organizations to assess objective progress. Therefore, NCHS is preparing a document entitled Tracking Healthy People 2010 that will be published in November 2000 which includes technical information so the many partners in the effort understand how the data are derived and the major statistical issues.