14.4 National Goals For Nutrition and Health: Healthy People 2030

Jill Reid, VCU

14.4 National Goals For Nutrition and Health: Healthy People 2030

Video 14.2 Healthy People 2030 Launch http://www.youtube.com/v/zZG94c7xQmE

National Goals: Healthy People 2030

Vision

A society in which all people can achieve their full potential for health and well-being across the lifespan.

Mission

To promote, strengthen, and evaluate the nation’s efforts to improve the health and well-being of all people.

Foundational Principles

The following foundational principles guide decisions about Healthy People 2030:

The health and well-being of all people and communities is essential to a thriving, equitable society.
Promoting health and well-being and preventing disease are linked efforts that encompass physical, mental, and social health dimensions.
Investing to achieve the full potential for health and well-being for all provides valuable benefits to society.
Achieving health and well-being requires eliminating health disparities, achieving health equity, and attaining health literacy.
Healthy physical, social, and economic environments strengthen the potential to achieve health and well-being.
Promoting and achieving health and well-being nationwide is a shared responsibility that is distributed across the national, state, tribal, and community levels, including the public, private, and not-for-profit sectors.
Working to attain the full potential for health and well-being of the population is a component of decision-making and policy formulation across all sectors.

Overarching Goals

Achieving these broad and ambitious goals requires setting, working toward, and achieving a wide variety of much more specific goals. Healthy People 2030’s overarching goals are to:

Attain healthy, thriving lives and well-being free of preventable disease, disability, injury, and premature death.
Eliminate health disparities, achieve health equity, and attain health literacy to improve the health and well-being of all.
Create social, physical, and economic environments that promote attaining the full potential for health and well-being for all.
Promote healthy development, healthy behaviors, and well-being across all life stages.
Engage leadership, key constituents, and the public across multiple sectors to take action and design policies that improve the health and well-being of all.

Plan of Action

It’s important to provide information and tools to help communities, states, and organizations use Healthy People. The Healthy People 2030 plan of action is to:

Set national goals and measurable objectives to guide evidence-based policies, programs, and other actions to improve health and well-being.
Provide accurate, timely, and accessible data that can drive targeted actions to address regions and populations that have poor health or are at high risk for poor health.
Foster impact through public and private efforts to improve health and well-being for people of all ages and the communities in which they live.
Provide tools for the public, programs, policymakers, and others to evaluate progress toward improving health and well-being.
Share and support the implementation of evidence-based programs and policies that are replicable, scalable, and sustainable.
Report biennially on progress throughout the decade from 2020 to 2030.
Stimulate research and innovation toward meeting Healthy People 2030 goals and highlight critical research, data, and evaluation needs.
Facilitate the development and availability of affordable means of health promotion, disease prevention, and treatment.

History and Context

The Healthy People initiative began in 1979 when Surgeon General Julius Richmond issued a landmark report titled “Healthy People: The Surgeon General’s Report on Health Promotion and Disease Prevention.” Healthy People 2030 is the fifth iteration of the initiative. It builds on knowledge gained and lessons learned to address the latest public health priorities.

For more information, visit Health People 2030. https://health.gov/healthypeople

Nutrition and Healthy Eating

Goal: Improve health by promoting healthy eating and making nutritious foods available.

Many people in the United States don’t eat a healthy diet. Healthy People 2030 focuses on helping people get the recommended amounts of healthy foods — like fruits, vegetables, and whole grains — to reduce their risk for chronic diseases and improve their health.¹The Nutrition and Healthy Eating objectives also aim to help people get recommended amounts of key nutrients, like calcium and potassium.

People who eat too many unhealthy foods — like foods high in saturated fat and added sugars — are at increased risk for obesity, heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and other health problems. Strategies and interventions to help people choose healthy foods can help reduce their risk of chronic diseases and improve their overall health.

Some people don’t have the information they need to choose healthy foods. Other people don’t have access to healthy foods or can’t afford to buy enough food. Public health interventions that focus on helping everyone get healthy foods are key to reducing food insecurity and hunger and improving health.