In the year 2000, government health officials set some pretty hefty health goals for Americans to reach by 2010.
We, as Americans, didn’t meet these goals the way we should have.
Obesity rates are higher, more people have high blood pressure, we eat twice as much fast food with fat and salt, and more children go without proper dental care.
However, aside from the negative, we have made some positive efforts. There are fewer death rates from cancer and stroke, and vaccination rates are improving.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services reassesses goals every 10 years and documents the progress made. Officials are taking the data they collected from the past 10 years to make a new set of health goals to be met by 2020.
An advisory panel of experts has recommended that the new goals be more realistic. They also hope to make it more inviting to the public.
A project called Healthy People was created in the 1970s to let people know that most health issues are preventable.
Dr. Howard Koh, the federal health official who oversees the project, told the Associated Press (AP), “We need to strike a balance of setting targets that are achievable and also ask the country to reach.”
“That’s a balance that’s sometimes a challenge to strike,” he added.
Although health agency workers have memorized the goals, the public isn’t very familiar with them.
“It is something that we think about all the time,” Dr. Lance Rodewald, a vaccination expert at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told AP.
In 1990s, 41 percent of the goals were achieved, and only 24 percent were achieved for the 2000 goals.
The CDC analysis of the past 10 years, which won’t be released until 2011, shows that only about 20 percent of goals were reached.
For example: One goal was for the percentage of obese people to drop to 15 percent, when at the time nearly a quarter of all adults overweight. According to the latest federal statistics, about 34 percent of adults are obese now.
Some other negative statistics include:
-In 2002, high blood pressure percentages dropped 16 percent from 28 percent, then shot up 20 percent according to recent data.
-The percentage of infants born very small and fragile increased.
-A goal of 9 percent was issued for young children without dental care in 2000 and instead of decreasing, the number rose 20 percent.
To many health officials, simply making progress is a victory.
“That’s evidence of a healthier nation,” Koh said.
Dr. Jonathan Fielding and others want to make a Healthy People 2020 website to provide the public with sources for nutrition and exercise advice.
“We want to make 2020 a blueprint everyone can rally behind,” Fielding said.
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