Healthy People 2020 Calls for More Adults to Meet Aerobic and Muscle-Strengthening Objectives
Yesterday, the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) presented the leading health indicators (LHI) for Healthy People 2020, which include a call to increase the proportion of adults who meet the federal physical activity guidelines for aerobic physical activity and muscle-strengthening activity.
Healthy People 2020 provides a comprehensive set of 10-year, national goals and objectives for improving the health of all Americans. The program contains 42 topic areas with nearly 600 objectives that encompass 1,200 measures. LHIs are a small set of Healthy People 2020 objectives that are composed of 26 indicators organized under 12 topics considered high-priority areas for action.
Other LHIs under the Nutrition, Physical Activity, and Obesity topic area include reducing the proportion of adults and children/adolescents (aged 2-19 years) who are obese from 34.0% to 30.6% and 16.2% to 14.6%, respectively.
To help increase access to health care services, Healthy People 2020 recommends increasing the number of people with medical insurance from 83.2% to 100% and increasing the percentage of people with a usual primary care provider from 76.3% to 83.9%.
One LHI has been identified under the diabetes objectives: to reduce the proportion of the population with diabetes with an A1c value greater than 9%.
APTA is a member of the Healthy People Consortium—an alliance of more than 350 national membership organizations. The association submitted comments to HHS on the Healthy People 2020 draft objectives.