Healthy People 2020

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Healthy People 2020 asses the health status of the United States population. According to Health People.gov “measures of general health status provide information on the health of a population. Measuring health status can be done by monitoring life expectancy, years of potential life lost, and disparities in health care access. Measuring heath status is used in health care because it makes it easier to understand health outcomes.
Life expectancy has increased by thirty years during the twentieth century. It is “the average number of years a population of a certain age would be expected to live, given a set of age-specific death rates in a given year (Health People.gov).” Within different ethnic groups, “women have a higher life expectancy than men.” Also, life expectancy “provides global information about disparities (Kominski, G. (2014).” There are gaps between men and women, and between blacks and whites. According to Changing the U.S. Health Care System, Latino females have the highest life expectancy rate, and African American man had the lowest life expectancy rate. …show more content…

Years of potential life lost is a calculation of the “weighted total of the number of deaths by age, with the weight for each age determined by the particular method of valuing potential remaining years of life (Gardner, J. and Sanborn, J).” In addition, years of potential life lost is used to “emphasize deaths at younger ages (Gardner, J. and Sanborn, J).” According to Changing the U.S. Health Care System, “the two largest contributors to the disproportionately high YPLL rate among African Americans are cancer and heart disease (2014).” Cancer is the most important contributor to YPLL because it is the “second leading cause of death but accounts for the largest YPLL per 100,000 for both males and females (Healthy People