Rob Simmons, DrPH, MPH, CHES, CPH
Director, Master of Public Health (MPH) Program
Jefferson School of Population Health
The Society for Public Health Education (SOPHE) annual meeting was held in Denver recently, with the theme “Healthy People 2020, A Look Back, A Look Forward.”
The goal of the meeting was to review progress on the US preventive health agenda since the 1979 inception of the Healthy People national plan for prevention and the creation of the Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion (ODPHP) within the Dept. of Health and Human Services (HHS). The meeting also examined changes proposed in the fourth iteration of the initiative, Healthy People 2020, which will be released in early December.
Healthy People 2020 will be quite different from the previous national prevention plans. It will be web-based and directly linked to a range of national digital databases, allowing professionals and the public to search for any health topic and obtain information on related topics in other health areas. Fourteen new health focus areas have been added to the 28 in Healthy People 2010, and over 100 new objectives with data sources have been delineated. Content areas include life stages, dementia, genomics, global health, healthcare infections, preparedness, quality of life, lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender (LGBT) health, and social determinants of health.
Healthy People 2020 will be a branded “movement” with new communication mechanisms to reach those outside of the healthcare sector as the goals, objectives and actions are integrated into the context of our lives, where we live, learn, work and play.
I was asked to facilitate a town hall meeting about the national prevention and health promotion strategy featured in the Patient Protection and Accountable Care Act (PPACA) and linked to Healthy People 2020. Representatives from HHS and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) provided an overview of the National Prevention Council, which includes representatives from 17 federal departments, 12 federal agencies, and a 25-member community advisory board. he federal representatives were very receptive to commentary received from the group of public health educators at the meeting, and from those who participated online.
I left the SOPHE conference with new inspiration. I can’t wait to share my enthusiasm with colleagues and students when Healthy People 2020 and the National Prevention and Health Promotion Strategy are released early in 2011.