1.3: Healthy People
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We want people to be healthy. A healthy population is a nations greatest resource, it means a productive population, a prosperous population, and a healthy economy. Your individual commitment to striving for personal wellness may contribute to our national goals for a healthy population!
Every decade since 1980, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has published healthy goals for our U.S. population called the Healthy People initiative. Healthy People 2030 is the 5th iteration of the Healthy People initiative. The Healthy People initiative is designed to guide national health promotion and disease prevention efforts to improve the health of the nation.
The 2030 broad goals for this decade include the following:
- 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 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.
The five broad goals are further divided into over 400 objectives: 355 core objectives, 115 developmental objectives and 40 newly added research objectives. The science-based objectives include targets to monitor progress and motivate action. The Healthy People 2030 objectives were carefully chosen based on national data. The goal is to work together as a nation to achieve the achieve the objectives and goals to hopefully improve health and well-being nationwide.
Challenge: Healthy People Goals and You
How might you benefit from the work being done to achieve the Healthy People goals?
Go to the Healthy People website and browse the Healthy People Objectives
Your challenge is to find an objective that either impacts you or a loved one, or is something that you have been curious about.
Click on the objective and begin by reading the overview to gain a better understanding of what they are hoping to achieve and then navigate to the menu item titled Healthy People In Action to see how communities across the nation are working to achieve the goal. You can then review the Evidence Based Resources to see if you can locate helpful evidence-based resources to achieve the objective.
Health Literacy
The internet brought us the ability to have a wealth of information at our fingertips. Have you ever felt sick and googled your symptoms to try to self-diagnose your sickness? Have you been scrolling through your social media and an article popped up promising a cure to obesity with just one simple pill?
With so much information available to us, it is imperative that we understand how to critically evaluate information we see or hear. The need to be critical consumers of information is reflected in the Healthy People broad goal to “eliminate health disparities, achieve health equity, and attain health literacy to improve the health and well-being of all.” We need to increase our health literacy.
The CDC defines personal health literacy as the degree to which individuals have the ability to find, understand, and use information and services to inform health-related decisions and actions for themselves and others [7] . We must be critical consumers of information which starts with evaluating the source of the information.
Evaluating and Finding Health Information
One strategy for assessing a website is to use the CRAAP [8] method which stands for Currency, Relevance, Authority, Accuracy, and Purpose.
As you read information critically, ask yourself the following questions:
Currency: The timeliness of the information.
- When was the information published or posted?
- Has the information been revised or updated?
- Does your topic of interest require current information, or will older sources work as well?
- Are the links functional?
Relevance: The importance of the information for your needs.
- Does the information relate to your topic or answer your question?
- Who is the intended audience?
- Is the information at an appropriate level (i.e. not too elementary or advanced for your needs)?
- Have you looked at a variety of sources before determining this is one you will use?
- Would you be comfortable citing this source in a research paper?
Authority: The source of the information.
- Who is the author/publisher/source/sponsor?
- What are the author’s credentials or organizational affiliations?
- Is the author qualified to write on the topic?
- Is there contact information, such as a publisher or email address?
- Does the URL reveal anything about the author or source? examples: .com .edu .gov .org .net
Accuracy: The reliability, truthfulness and correctness of the content.
- Where does the information come from?
- Is the information supported by evidence?
- Has the information been reviewed or refereed?
- Can you verify any of the information in another source or from personal knowledge?
- Does the language or tone seem unbiased and free of emotion?
- Are there spelling, grammar or typographical errors?
Purpose: The reason the information exists.
- What is the purpose of the information? Is it to inform, teach, sell, entertain or persuade?
- Do the authors/sponsors make their intentions or purpose clear?
- Is the information fact, opinion or propaganda?
- Does the point of view appear objective and impartial?
- Are there political, ideological, cultural, religious, institutional or personal biases?
Examples of Trusted Source of Health Information
The following is a short list of websites that are most likely to pass the CRAAP test for health information:
- The Center for Disease Control and Prevention
- World Health Organization
- PubMed Central (PMC) is a free full-text archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature at the U.S. National Institutes of Health’s National Library of Medicine (NIH/NLM).
- MyHealthFinder is a prevention and wellness resource that includes evidence-based health information in English and Spanish that’s actionable and easy to use.
- U.S. Department of Health and Human Services