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Ending the Tobacco Epidemic in the United States: Healthy People 2020
Fifty years after the first Surgeon General’s Report on Smoking and Health linked smoking and lung cancer, more than 480,000 Americans continue to die each year from smoking-related disease in the United States. Healthy People 2020 (HP2020) provides a road map with evidence-based, 10-year national objectives for improving the country’s health, including 76 objectives related to tobacco use. HP2020 tracks progress toward reaching targets for tobacco use prevalence, health systems, and social and environmental change, and details evidence-based tobacco prevention and control interventions that are proven to be effective in reducing tobacco use and secondhand smoke exposure.
Intervention:
As a national initiative, HP2020 reflects assessments of major risks to health, changing public health priorities, and emerging issues related to health preparedness and prevention strategies. States and communities use HP2020 as a roadmap for tracking progress toward national health objectives. Due to limited state tobacco control program funding levels, many states lack the time and resources required to disseminate data related to tobacco prevention and control. HP2020 communicates and synthesizes data into health promotion tools allowing states and communities increased access to information on national tobacco prevention and control initiatives.
Results:
Among 76 tobacco use objectives, we have met 6 and have made progress on 22; however, we are still not on track to achieve 40% of the objectives by 2020. These findings highlight that tobacco use prevention and cessation efforts can improve health and quality of life, but that tobacco use and secondhand smoke continue to cause considerable death and disease.
Conclusions:
HP2020 offers a renewed emphasis on overcoming challenges in tobacco prevention and control efforts as progress is tracked throughout the decade. The HP2020 framework and indicators can be used as a template by states and communities to assess key indicators, facilitate collaboration across sectors, and motivate action at the national, state, and local levels to improve population level health.
Learning Areas:
Advocacy for health and health educationImplementation of health education strategies, interventions and programs
Planning of health education strategies, interventions, and programs
Program planning
Public health or related public policy
Systems thinking models (conceptual and theoretical models), applications related to public health
Learning Objectives:
Discuss current progress in the U.S. toward meeting 10-year Healthy People 2020 targets for reducing illness, disability, and death related to tobacco use and secondhand smoke exposure.
Describe how the Healthy People framework and indicators can be used as a template by states and communities to assess progress towards improving public health.
Demonstrate how key stakeholders can access tobacco related data and objective information to inform tobacco control policy, planning, and practice.
Keyword(s): Tobacco Use, Tobacco Control
Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: I have been a public health advisor for the Office on Smoking and Health at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for more than five years focusing on the development of tobacco use data applications, analysis of tobacco product types and emerging areas of tobacco control, and goals related to tobacco control policies, public health issues, legislation, and performance.
Any relevant financial relationships? No
I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.