Steven Palestino
Critical Thinking Assignment 1
Healthy People 2020 Healthy People was established in 1979 by the Department of Health and Human
Services with a mission to improve health and well-being across the entire nation (Nutrition,
Health and Safety for Young Children: Promoting Wellness.). Healthy People tracks information about disease, health equity, disparities, overall wellness, and hundreds of other important categories (Center for Disease Control and Prevention). The Healthy People initiative tracks and records data every ten years and shows if improvements are made in several different categories.
Healthy People 2020 is the most recent program. The Healthy People 2020 initiative consists of 600 objectives which are further broken down into 42 topic areas, and 28 health indicator focus areas (Nutrition, Health and…). The initiative focuses on national statistics, with state and residential statistics added over the period of time. One of the most important objectives that deals with this class is the section about Early and Middle Childhood. The goal of the Early and Middle Childhood objective is to “document and track population based measures of health and well-being for early and middle childhood populations over time in the United States” (Healthy People). Early childhood is defined from birth to the age of eight years old and is important because it is a time extreme physical, emotional, and cognitive development. Middle childhood is defined as anytime between the age of six to twelve years old and is important because it is a time when children develop emotional and social relationships. The Early and Middle Childhood objective of Healthy People 2020 focuses on focuses on topics such as chronic disorders, obesity, oral hygiene, child maltreatment, developmental and behavioral disorders, and much more.