HHS Announces Health Promotion/Disease Prevention Agenda
On December 2, 2010, HHS released “Healthy People 2020,” which sets forth new 10-year goals and objectives for national health promotion and disease prevention. The document includes a greater focus on identifying, measuring, tracking, and reducing health disparities through a “determinants of health” approach that examines the range of personal, social, economic, and environmental factors that influence health status. New topic areas for 2020 include, among others, genomics, healthcare-associated infections, and health incident preparedness. HHS also announced a contest for technology application developers to design platform-neutral applications to provide Healthy People stakeholders (e.g., professionals and advocates) with easy access to a comprehensive suite of information resources to maximize their success in achieving Health People objectives. The application deadline is March 7, 2011.
