In conditions of ever increasing disease rate and expressively negligent attitude of Americans toward their physical well-being, research-based health initiatives are becoming extremely important. The Healthy People 2020 project aims at making health improvement a nationwide priority and sets forward a detailed step-by-step plan for implementation of this purpose. If guided in the right manner and supported by both people and the authorities, this programme may turn out really efficacious for promotion of healthy life values by enhancing health literacy and access to medical research data, although the objectives of creating generally wholesome social and physical environments may be too extensive and not so easily accomplishable as they are described.
Devised under the auspices of the Federal Interagency Workgroup (FIW) in collaboration with numerous health organizations and private persons, this initiative sets forth far-reaching and comprehensive goals, which are to be attained both at national, state and local levels. Many of the project’s objectives involve interventions in order to reduce disease and disability rate, cut down untimely death in the country, as well as address social and ecological determinants of health, improve access to and the quality of health care services, provide uninterrupted dissemination of health-related information. These objectives can be described as overarching goals, but the smaller-scale issues of primary importance are set apart as Leading Health Indicators and embrace clinical preventive services, mental health, environmental quality, injury and violence control, nutrition problems, maternal and child health. In all, there are approximately 600 objectives in the project with over 1,300 measures (HealthyPeople.gov, 2011). Each objective includes reliable evidence-based resources and clearly-defined targets by 2020. In my opinion, some of the fundamental goals of the initiative sound too wide-range and are very hardly feasible, particularly in the sphere of environmental improvement: this requires involvement of the authorities and influential industrialists who may just not be interested. However, enhancing access to information and quality healthcare, creating medical databases and eliminating disparities do not sound abstract at all and are attainable, provided the involvement of medical workers nationwide. The Leading Health Indicators represent the most burning issues of modern American society and need to be approached with particular scrutiny.
All of these goals are to be achieved within the framework of newly-adopted Ecological and Determinants Approach which emphasizes building of favourable physical and social environments. For Americans today the all-hazard preparedness is also admitted crucial for improvement of well-being rates. The essential part of the initiative is integrating prevention into the continuum of education and raising access to prevention and treatment information. The participants also devote much effort to incorporating where applicable the public health IT infrastructure. Emphasis on new technology application and raising educational standards, to my mind, are the most timely and easily executable, whereas all-hazard preparedness seems to only contribute to the constant stress Americans are subjected to. Access to information is good, but being overflowed with information certainly does not favour the mental health of modern society.
On the whole, the initiative is rather reasonable in most points and gives …