Health objectives for the nation: moving toward the 1990s

The 1990 Objectives are an outgrowth of the 1979 Surgeon General's Report, Healthy People, which identified a set of five broad goals for improving the health of the American public through the decade of the 1980s. A year later, more than 500 health experts from the government and the private sector met to develop specific quantifiable objectives for each of the areas outlined in Healthy People. Fifteen topics, including improved nutrition, were used to formulate a framework for 227 objectives that give directions for a national program of health promotion and disease prevention. In 1980, the Public Health Service published the report Promoting Health/Preventing Disease: Objectives for the Nation. A mid-course review of the 1990 objectives has been conducted, and the results were published in 1986. In the nutrition area, it is apparent that some overall progress has been made, but data are insufficient to assess progress on several objectives, and others are unlikely of achievement by 1990. Ultimately, however, the success of the objectives depends on the recognition that they are national, not federal, goals that require commitment to their implementation by both the public and the private sector.