DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES
Meeting of: Secretary's Council on National Health Promotion and Disease
Prevention Objectives for 2010
September 12, 2000, Proceedings
Agenda Item: Achieving the Objectives--Randolph Wykoff/ODPHP
DR. SATCHER: But here to discuss our thinking up to now with regard to achieving the objectives is Dr. Randy Wykoff. Randy is Deputy Assistant Secretary for Health for Disease Prevention and Health Promotion. He came into that position at a very difficult time, and really exerted the kind of leadership that we needed, and is really moving us forward.
So Randy, why don't you --
DR. WYKOFF: Thank you, Dr. Satcher. As Dr. Satcher says, I've been on the job exactly one year as of this Thursday, so while that pales in comparison to the many decades that you all have been involved, it does give me a bit of a perspective to comment a bit on where we're going.
One of the things that we are definitely going to be doing is, I understand, we are not going to be having my slides. There is some sort of PowerPoint strike, which has shut down here, so we'll have to imagine very colorful and erudite slides to match the presenters.
In the year that I have been on the job, I have come to realize that we are at a very exciting, but also very important and critical, time in the future of Healthy People. I think over the coming year, we will be making decisions about Healthy People that will not only impact on Healthy People 2010, but will fundamentally impact this process as it goes forward for decades to come.
To understand why we think these decisions need to be made, we need to review briefly where we are at with Healthy People 2010. As Dr. Satcher said, we released the Conference edition in January of this year. Since that time, we have distributed 7,000 copies of this paper version publicly. We have released almost 7,000 copies of the
CD-ROM, the electronic version, and then, the Understanding and Improving Health, the part that includes the Leading Health Indicators -- we distributed about 11,000 copies of that. So altogether, somewhere above 40,000 copies are circulating of Healthy People and Healthy People-related documents.
On the 11th of November of this year, we will be issuing the final version, as Dr. Satcher says, at the Consortium meeting in Boston. That version will look a lot like the conference edition, but there will be two major changes in it. The first is that there will be 100 of the objectives, approximately, that will have new data elements that have been added. So it will be updated, which will be important for community-based organizations.
The second major change is that it will now be associated with a new document called Tracking Healthy People 2010, a 1,000-page document that has been developed by the National Center for Health Statistics, which is really a unique edition. It represents the technical information on how objectives were calculated. So it will allow communities and others to replicate the process. It really is a very important and very unique addition to Healthy People. While it won't be of direct interest to all of the people that are interested in the larger volume, it will be very important to folks who are trying to replicate this process on the community level.
The Tracking Healthy People document is not the only thing that is unique about Healthy People 2010, of course. I think it is fair to say that, with the two overarching objectives of improving years and quality of life and eliminating disparities, that this is certainly the most ambitious of the three Healthy People processes. With 28 focus areas and 467 objectives, it is also the most complete and the most comprehensive.
I think, with the 10 Leading Health Indicators, it is probably also the most focused. It is an opportunity, we think, to serve as an interface between the general public and public health. We think that these 10 Leading Health Indicators are the ideal way for us to communicate with the general public, with the media, and with elected officials.
So we are very excited about Healthy People 2010. Obviously, it serves different purposes for different people. For some people, it is a statistical description of the United States. It is certainly the most comprehensive description of racial and ethnic disparities that exist in our country. To others, it is a textbook of public health priorities, and to others, it is an important part of a national strategic plan to improve health.
That's where we are now. But I mentioned in the beginning of my talk that this is an exciting time, not only because of what we have created, but also because of the decisions we have to make, what we have to do with this document.
I think we have one major challenge with Healthy People 2010. It was alluded to in my earlier comment when I said that this is an important part of a national strategic plan. Healthy People lays out a very bold vision of where this country needs to be in 10 years. It gives us 467 objectives that we need to achieve to reach that vision. In that sense, it's bold, it's ambitious, and it pushes the edge.
But, if you think about it, a strategic plan needs to have more than just a vision and objectives. There need to be action steps. We need to know how we're going to translate those objectives into reality, how we're going to reach those objectives. Setting them is vitally important, but having a sense of how we're going to reach them is even more important.
Healthy People represents an incredible investment of intellect, of time, of resources. The agencies around this table committed their lead scientists to developing this document, to make it the really exceptional document it is. But the analogy that we make is that it is very much like a battery. We put all this energy into it. We put in intellectual energy, we put creative energy, we put good old-fashioned hard work into it. But we don't have a plan or an approach or a vehicle by which we can be sure of getting the maximum benefit from that. How do we get the energy back out of the battery?
That really, I think, is the major challenge that faces us. How do we get the most out of Healthy People 2010? How do we make sure that we actually move these 467 objectives into action? To that end, we have talked about four broad things that we need to do. One is, we need to make the most of the Leading Health Indicators. We need to figure out how to use them in the way that most generates public interest and public enthusiasm.
We have talked about the possibility of the Surgeon General reporting once a year on the health of the nation using the Leading Health Indicators. We have talked about trying to develop an action plan on each of the 10, so that over the decade, you will have specific measurable steps to try and achieve them. We have talked about the importance of having a major event every couple of months to keep reminding the public about what the Leading Health Indicators are. We have talked about, as Dr. Mason or others alluded to, the importance of bringing in outside professional assistance to help us figure out how we communicate this to the general public in a way that makes sense to the public.
The second broad area that we talked about is, how do we -- what we call -- adopt objectives? How do we get outside groups and organizations to partner with each other and partner with government to actually move towards achieving these objectives? We talked about the Adopt-A-Highway program. We know what that has done. Can we get outside groups to make a commitment to achieving these objectives, so that it really does go beyond the federal government and become a national document?
The third broad area that we talked about is data. Clearly, for Healthy People, the backbone of this project is data. But, we recognize that much of the data that we really need is not here.
Several of you have mentioned the importance of community-based programs. We recognize that, to be effective, this has to be translated into community-based action. Yet, we simply don't have community and state data comparable to the national data. One of the great challenges we have with implementing Healthy People is how we get the data on the state and local level.
The fourth area that we are exploring is simply an evaluation of Healthy People -- who uses it, how do they use it, what parts of it get used, what parts don't get used, how could it be improved in the future? For each of those four areas -- Leading Health Indicators, adopting objectives, data, and evaluation -- we would very much appreciate your thoughts and suggestions on how we can move forward in that area.
This really is an exciting time. We really do have a tremendous potential document here. What we have to do today is to begin a dialogue to translate this potential energy into actual energy. I look forward to your thoughts and comments to help us move in that direction.
DR. SATCHER: Thank you very much, Randy. I think you see what I mean about his leadership and the excitement and energy which he brings to this effort.