What Are the Leading Health Indicators?

What Is Healthy People?

Healthy People 2020 provides science-based, 10-year national objectives for improving the health of all Americans.. For 3 decades, Healthy People has established benchmarks and monitored progress over time in order to:

• Encourage collaborations across communities and sectors.
• Empower individuals toward making informed health decisions.
• Measure the impact of prevention activities

It can be used by many different people, states, communities, professional organizations, and others to help them develop programs to improve health.

Healthy People 2020 continues in this tradition with the launch on December 2, 2010 of its ambitious, yet achievable, 10-year agenda for improving the Nation’s health. Healthy People 2020 is the result of a multiyear process that reflects input from a diverse group of individuals and organizations.

What Are the Leading Health Indicators?

Healthy People 2020 provides a comprehensive set of 10-year, national goals and objectives for improving the health of all Americans. Healthy People 2020 contains 42 topic areas with nearly 600 objectives (with others still evolving), which encompass 1,200 measures. A smaller set of Healthy People 2020 objectives, called Leading Health Indicators, has been selected to communicate high-priority health issues and actions that can be taken to address them

. The Leading Health Indicators are composed of 26 indicators organized under 12 topics. The Healthy People 2020 Leading Health Indicators are:

1. Access to Health Services                                  7.  Nutrition, Physical Activity, and Obesity

1. Clinical Preventive Services                                  8.  Oral Health

1. Environmental Quality                                           9.  Reproductive and Sexual Health

1. Injury and Violence                                                10.  Social Determinants

1. Maternal, Infant, and Child Health                       11. Substance Abuse

1. Mental Health                                             .      12. Tobacco

http://www.healthypeople.gov/2020/about/default.aspx