Data challenges and successes with healthy people.

Abstract

Which came first: the Healthy People objective or the data source to track the objective? This ‘‘chicken or egg’’ question and the experience in measuring national health promotion an disease prevention objectives can be instructive for planning Healthy People 2010—the Nation’s health agenda for the first decade of the 21st century. Thi paper examines the experience of the past 18 years in monitoring and reporting on the nation’s health objectives. Among the principle findings is that there has been considerably mo success in tracking the Healthy People 2000 objectives as compared to the 1990 objectives. The experience in monitoring the second decade of public health objectives has produced more new data on subjects not previously tracked and has offered considerably more insight into prevention issues.