Healthy People 2020: Public Health Initiatives and Obesity Management

This report provides an overview of Healthy People 2020, a comprehensive initiative launched by the Department of Health and Human Services. It outlines the program's four key objectives: ensuring a high-quality, longer life free from preventable diseases; promoting health equity; building social and physical conditions for health; and fostering quality of life and healthy behaviors. The report details the overarching goals, including reducing premature deaths, eliminating health disparities, improving social and physical environments, and promoting healthy behaviors. It further explores the foundations of health measures, covering general health status, determinants of health, and health disparities, with a focus on the prevalence of chronic diseases and social determinants. The report also addresses the significant public health problem of childhood obesity and examines the public health infrastructure, including its mission, importance, and key elements. It concludes by outlining ten essential public health services and how a nurse can manage obesity, from monitoring and education to policy development and research, all within the Healthy People 2020 framework.

Running head: HEALTHY PEOPLE 2020
HEALTHY PEOPLE 2020
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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1. Healthy People 2020
Healthy People 2020 was launched by the Department of Health and Human Services in
December 2010, and strives for four key objectives: ensuring a high-quality, longer life without
preventable diseases, illness, accident, and premature death; health equality, reducing
inequalities, enhancing the health of all members. In this decade, reviews were provided to
display all results and activities at federal, state and local levels by progress assessments.
HP2020 progress surveys (Www.healthypeople.gov. 2020). Each of the 42 HP2020 topics is
introduced once a decade in a webinar.
2. The overarching goals are:
 Attaining high quality, longer life without illness, impairment, accident and premature
death.
 Attaining racial equality, eliminate disparities, and enhancing both groups ' wellbeing.
 Build social and physical conditions for all to benefit from good health.
 Promote quality of life, healthy development and good behavior in life.
3. Explanation of goals:
First goal:
The premature deaths are common in America due to low quality of care, frequent accidents
that lead to high morbidity rate. In this context, Healthy People 2020 is an initiative taken by
governing bodies where the goal is to provide high-quality care to increase life expectancy,
improve quality to reduce the rate of accidents so that premature death can be reduced
(Greenberg et al. 2017).
The second goal:

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Racial discrimination is highly prevalent in America. In this context, for enhancing health
and wellbeing of all the ethnic group, eliminating disparities by providing access to the health
care can be effective which will address the racial inequality.
The third goal:
For promoting good health and wellbeing, the social environment of the individuals is
required to consider apart from the physical environment. Hence, HP2020 is a government
initiative to improve the physical and social environment to improve overall health.
Fourth goal:
HP2020 has taken initiative to reduce premature deaths through altering unhealthy
behaviour with healthy behavior which can create public awareness and facilitate the
participation of the population in obtaining goals (Woodard et al. 2018).
4. Foundation of health measures:
a) General Health Status:
 Life expectancy, years of potential lost,
 physically and mentally unhealthy days,
 self-assessed health status (Www.healthypeople.gov. 2020).
 limitation of activity
 Prevalence of chronic disease
Health-Related Quality of Life and Well-Being
 Wellbeing
 Participations in common activities
 Physical and mental social health and quality (Www.healthypeople.gov. 2020).
Determinants of Health:

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Social and economic along with environmental factors that impacted the health status
which include biology, genetics, individual behavior and access to health care.
Disparities:
The measures are based on disparities of health status based on :
 Race
 Ethnicity
 geography
 Physical and mental ability (Www.healthypeople.gov. 2020).
b) One progress of foundation health status:
General Health Status:
Prevalence of chronic disease:
Prevalence of chronic disease defined as the portion of the population affected by the chronic
disease. Prevalence of chronic disease in the community can be used to evaluate the general
health status of the population since the high prevalence indicates poor health status and affected
population due to poor health condition (Pahigiannis et al. 2019).
Health-Related Quality of Life and Well-Being:
Participation in common activities:
Participation in common activities defines as the ability of the population to participate
in social activities. The participation in the common activities provides the idea of high quality of
life free from depression, anxiety since social activities empower population and improve
satisfaction (Van Dijk et al. 2016).
Determinants of Health:

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Social determinants of the health defined as the social factors that improve the health and
wellbeing of the population. In this context, social determinants of health indicate the quality of
health since social factors such as education, health care access improve health status and health
behavior (Wigfall and Tanner 2018)
Disparities:
The race is one of the most common measures of the disparities since high racial
discrimination will reduce access to health care and contribute to poor health.
5. Health problem:
Childhood Obesity is one of the biggest problems that was observed in the community.
This problem is highly prevalent in the community since the majority of the school-going
children and adolescents develop type two diabetes, cardiovascular disease and other chronic
diseases (Bleich et al. 2018).
6. Public health infrastructure:
Mission:
To ensure that federal, state, tribal and local health agencies have the essential
infrastructure for providing public health services.
Importance:
 It is important since it facilitates public health services such as immunization, infectious
disease monitoring and asthma prevention, and injury prevention
(Www.healthypeople.gov. 2020).
Three key elements:

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 A capable and qualified workforce: specialists nurses
 Up-to-date data and information systems: electronic health record
 Responses of agencies to the public health needs: Administration for Community Living
(ACL) (Www.healthypeople.gov. 2020).
7.10 public health services:
Obesity management as a nurse:
1. Monitor: monitor the BMI and waist circumference along with the dietary habit
2. Diagnose and investigate: diagnosed whether BMI is 30 or higher along with weight
3. Education: Educate the community regarding exercise and food habit through PowerPoint
and poster (Vesely et al. 2016).
4. Mobilization: through health promotion, encourage community participation.
5. Develop policies and plans: develop policies of providing access to health care and
nutrition for the population (Vesely et al. 2016).
6. Enforce: impose laws with the collaboration of the governing bodies
7. Link: provide the services according to the personal need of adolescents
8. Ensure: ensure the collaboration between the public and personal health care workforce
9. Evaluate: Evaluate the effectiveness of the management through monitoring and seeking
feedback ) (Www.healthypeople.gov. 2020).
10. Research: involve in research that open new revenue for obesity management.

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References:
Bleich, S.N., Vercammen, K.A., Zatz, L.Y., Frelier, J.M., Ebbeling, C.B. and Peeters, A., 2018.
Interventions to prevent global childhood overweight and obesity: a systematic review. The
Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology, 6(4), pp.332-346.
Greenberg, A.J., Serrano, K.J., Thai, C.L., Blake, K.D., Moser, R.P., Hesse, B.W. and Ahern,
D.K., 2017. Public use of electronic personal health information: Measuring progress of the
Healthy People 2020 Objectives. Health policy and technology, 6(1), pp.33-39.
Pahigiannis, K., Thompson-Paul, A.M., Barfield, W., Ochiai, E., Loustalot, F., Shero, S. and
Hong, Y., 2019. Progress Toward Improved Cardiovascular Health in the United States: Healthy
People 2020 Heart Disease and Stroke Objectives. Circulation, 139(16), pp.1957-1973.
Van Dijk, H.M., Cramm, J.M., Birnie, E. and Nieboer, A.P., 2016. Effects of an integrated
neighborhood approach on older people’s (health-related) quality of life and well-being. BMC
research notes, 9(1), p.450.
Vesely, J.M., Pronk, N.P., Kottke, T.E. and Marshall, P.S., 2016. Obesity treatment at
HealthPartners: adaptation of clinical guidelines into systems for practice operations. Current
obesity reports, 5(3), pp.312-319.
Wigfall, L.T. and Tanner, A.H., 2018. Health literacy and health-care engagement as predictors
of shared decision-making among adult information seekers in the USA: a secondary data

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analysis of the Health Information National Trends Survey. Journal of Cancer Education, 33(1),
pp.67-73.
Woodard, L.J., Kahaleh, A.A., Nash, J.D., Truong, H., Gogineni, H. and Barbosa-Leiker, C.,
2018. Healthy People 2020: assessment of pharmacists' priorities. Public health, 155, pp.69-80.
Www.healthypeople.gov. 2020. General Health Status | Healthy People 2020.
Healthypeople.gov. Retrieved 22 February 2020, from
https://www.healthypeople.gov/2020/about/foundation-health-measures/General-Health-Status.