The U.S. government has set out new goals for the nation’s health over the next decade. The Department of Health and Human Services’ Healthy People 2030 plan lays out 355 objectives for improving health.
The goals supersede the more than 1,000 targets of Healthy People 2020, which guided health policy for the last decade.
Dr. Holly Ann Russell, the medical director for clinical and community programs at the Center for Community Health and Prevention, said the new guidance has an increased focus on issues that are not directly related to health care, called social determinants of health.
One example, Russell said, is that instead of simply naming a target number of minutes for people to exercise in a day, the new plan calls on communities to provide “opportunities for people to walk and bike in their communities — like by adding sidewalks and bike lanes.”
It’s an update that she said is necessary based on her clinical experience.
“We’ll talk to our patients about walking as a cheap and easy way to add physical activity. You don’t need any fancy equipment; you don’t need to join a gym. But, for many of our patients, they’ll say that they don’t feel safe walking in their neighborhoods.”
Russell said the focus on social determinants gets at the root of health disparities, rather than just addressing the symptoms. “Why aren’t some people getting the same amount of exercise as others? There’s a variety of reasons, from crime, to pollution, to unreliable sidewalk plowing when it snows, that prevent people from getting outside.”
Those concerns are not evenly distributed in the country’s population. “Racial/ethnic minorities and people with low incomes are more likely to live in places with these risks,” the health and human services department notes.
The objectives were developed over the last decade, before the COVID-19 pandemic struck, so they don’t explicitly address pandemic preparedness or responses. Still, Russell said, if communities meet the goals, they will likely be better equipped to handle future disease outbreaks.
According to data from the Monroe County Public Health Department, Black residents have been dying of COVID-19 at almost three times the rate of white residents. Russell said meeting social goals like reducing discrimination and increasing educational access would ease that disparity in the future.
