Health and Wellness

Goals Set for ‘Healthy People’ in 2010

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has unveiled “Healthy People 2010,” a national health agenda for the next 10 years. The agenda focuses on prevention and early intervention, and covers everything from reducing tobacco use and ensuring environmental quality to encouraging physical activity and supporting immunization programs.

The agenda focuses on two major themes:

Increasing the quality and years of healthy life.
Eliminating health disparities among different segments of the population, including addressing the differences that occur by gender, race or ethnicity, education or income, disability, living in rural localities, or sexual orientation.

From those themes flow no fewer than 467 objectives grouped into 28 focus areas. Those focus areas include: access to quality health services, environmental health, health communication, injury and violence prevention, occupational safety and health, physical activity and fitness, respiratory diseases, substance abuse, tobacco use, and vision and hearing.

Workers’ compensation-related issues figure prominently in the agenda. Among the goals:

Reduce the rate of injury and illness cases involving days away from work due to overexertion or repetitive motion by 50 percent.
Reduce pneumoconiosis (a lung disease caused by long-term inhalation of mineral or metallic dusts) by 10 percent.
Reduce work-related homicides by 20 percent.
Reduce work-related assaults by 29 percent.
Eliminate the problem of elevated blood-lead levels among people overexposed to lead at work.
Reduce occupational skin diseases by 30 percent.
Reduce needle stick injuries among health care workers by 30 percent.

For more information on the initiative, visit www.health.gov/healthypeople/default.htm.