Meeting Our Community's Needs
In most instances, achieving the Healthy People 2010 goals will represent a considerable “stretch” for residents of Delaware County, their health care providers, and partners. It will require all of us to be proactive in seeking every opportunity to provide early, constant, and widespread health education; to offer all residents recommended screenings and preventive interventions; and to remove and address barriers to changing behaviors or improving healthy habits. Creating this true partnership with patients and neighbors will be our constant goal over the next decade.
Healthy People 2010 provides our nation with the wide range of public health opportunities that exist in the first decade of the 21st century. With 467 objectives in 28 focus areas, Healthy People 2010 will be a tremendously valuable asset to health planners, medical practitioners, educators, elected officials, and all of us who work to improve health. Healthy People 2010 reflects the very best in public health planning — it is comprehensive, it was created by a broad coalition of experts from many sectors, it has been designed to measure progress over time, and, most importantly, it clearly lays out a series of objectives to bring better health to all people in this country.
Achieving the vision of “Healthy People in Healthy Communities” represents an opportunity for individuals to make healthy lifestyle choices for themselves and their families. It challenges clinicians to put prevention into their practices. It requires communities and businesses to support health-promoting policies in schools, worksites, and other settings. It calls for scientists to pursue new research. Above all, it demands that all of us work together, using both traditional and innovative approaches, to help the American public achieve the ten-year target defined by Healthy People 2010.
I wholeheartedly commend Healthy People 2010, and I challenge all of us to work together to achieve its ambitious and important vision.
— Donna Shalala, former Secretary of Health and Human Services
Source: Healthy People 2010: Understanding and Improving Health
