Patient education objectives in Healthy People 2000: policy and research issues

The extensive nationwide involvement in the development of year 2000 health objectives, and the breadth of the 298 objectives produced, illustrate the scope of contemporary public health and preventive medicine in the United States. Patient education is an essential element of numerous year 2000 priority targets; full accomplishment of the patient education objectives will be influenced by several policy issues. This paper discusses special needs in three areas: data for decision-making, prevention effectiveness and research gaps. One major data issue is difficulty in documenting the existence and scope of patient education, and better measurement systems are desirable. A renewed interest in prevention effectiveness suggests that patient education would benefit from emphasis on five elements of prevention effectiveness: guidelines development; guidelines dissemination; demonstrations and technical assistance; monitoring; and research. Emerging research needs are identified, with particular focus on quality-of-life measurement and on integrated patient education and health communication strategies.