Skip left navigation

Home > Publications > Federal reports > Healthy People 2010 – Women's and Men's Health: A Comparison of Select Indicators

Healthy People 2010 – Women's and Men's Health: A Comparison of Select Indicators

Introduction

Table of Contents | Previous | Next

Healthy People 2010 is a set of health objectives for the Nation to achieve over the first decade of the 21st century. Under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Healthy People 2010 builds on initiatives pursued over nearly three decades. The initiative's overarching goals call for increasing quality and years of healthy life and for eliminating health disparities, including gender-specific differences. Many of the objectives address the most significant preventable threats to women's health and establish targets for specific improvements.

Some gender-related health issues are strictly biological, such as ovarian cancer and prostate cancer. Others, such as tobacco use, may involve roles, behaviors, and activities a society or culture considers appropriate for females and males.

This report examines progress by females and males toward 18 Healthy People 2010 objectives. These objectives were selected because they represent leading indicators of women's health and gender-specific data are available. The emphasis is on adult health, although some objectives including adolescents are presented.

The data used to assess progress were obtained from several published reports and public-access data systems. Many of the data were available for the Healthy People 2010 Midcourse Review,³ which assessed progress toward achieving the Healthy People 2010 goals and objectives through the first half of the decade. Assessments reflected in this report often incorporate data published subsequently. Thus, the findings presented here represent the most recent picture of women's health and the prospects for improvement.[*]

The HHS Office on Women's Health (OWH) spearheads women's health issues. OWH has produced this progress report in partnership with the HHS Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion (ODPHP). ODPHP manages and coordinates the Healthy People 2010 initiative.

The data used to assess progress were originally collected through a number of national surveys and surveillance systems. The Technical Appendix presents information about the data sources for each objective along with definitions and related notes.

The report provides trend data covering all available years between 1990 and 2007. In addition, when data are available from the sources used for this report, select population groups are examined. The select populations considered are females and males categorized by race and ethnicity, age, income, education, and urban/rural location. Because trend data for these specific populations often are not available, the analyses presented here are limited to an examination of the most recent reliable data points. More information about these population groups can be found in the Technical Appendix. Graphs demonstrating the gender and other compelling differences are included for all but one objective where trend data are not available.

In this report, the terms "females" and "males" refer to persons of all ages. "Boys" and "girls" refer to children and adolescents, and "women" and "men" refer to adults.

The 18 objectives addressed in this report cover a multitude of health topics. For discussion purposes, these topics have been categorized into access to health care, physical assault by intimate partners, preventive behaviors, and responsible sexual behavior. Table 1 lists the objectives, the Healthy People 2010 baselines and targets, and the most recent data points for females and males.

Table 1 shows large and small gains in progress toward the Healthy People 2010 targets for both females and males. For several objectives, no progress has been noted. The target has been achieved for one objective: reducing the rate of physical assault among persons aged 12 years and older by current or former intimate partners.

For some objectives, females fare better than males; for others, the opposite is true. As noted above, the target for physical assault by intimate partners has been achieved for both females and males. Actually, the assault rate for male victims has long been well below the Healthy People 2010 target of 3.3 physical assaults per 1,000 population. While Healthy People 2010 aims to achieve the targets for objectives such as the rate of assaults on female victims, from a public health perspective, it is also important to maintain and improve rates when the target rates have been achieved.

Table 1. Status of Select Healthy People 2010 Objectives by Gender

Table of Contents | Previous | Next

Content last updated July 1, 2009.

Email Print

Return to top