Healthy People 2020: Strategies for Oral Health Visibility

Oral health has been part of the Healthy People [HP] initiative since its inception in 1979. HP has stimulated actions to address the “silent epidemic” of oral diseases. HP has always been touted as representing national not federal health objectives. The underlying theory is that with extensive non-federal input in the development and monitoring of the objectives, the responsibility of contributing to meeting the objectives would rest with all individuals and sectors. Because both the number of focus areas and objectives have grown, there has been discussion by feds to limit the number of focus areas and objectives for HP2020. Additionally, there has been some discussion about moving to a health determinants framework not the current HP2010 focus areas. Because of some of the approaches suggested there is a possibility that a separate oral health focus area could be eliminated. This session will provide an overview of the previous and current process being used to develop focus areas and objectives. With the current effort to reduce the number of focus areas and objectives the challenge is to explore how oral health can continue to be included in Healthy People 2020. The purpose of this session is to gain an overview of the original intent and process of HP, to contrast and compare the first three decades of developing and monitoring the objectives with recent events and to identify specific actions and strategies related to the successful inclusion of oral health in the developing focus areas and objectives for HP2020.