Issues related to monitoring the Year 2000 objectives.

The publication of Healthy People 2000: National Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Objectives in the fall of 1990 was the culmination of three years of collaborative effort toward the crafting of 300 specific objectives (l). These activities relied heavily on the experiences gained over the previous decade in the development and monitoring of the 1990 objectives (2). The National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) has the lead responsibility for monitoring progress toward the Year 2000 objectives at the national level; we have received inquiries about data and tracking issues. In this article, we describe a number of these issues; some issues are settled, others are yet to be resolved fully. Future Statistical Notes will focus on some of the problems raised below in more detail. Baseline measures In a number of instances, the baselines published in Healthy PeopIe 2000 have been revised. The reasons for these revisions are varied. A large portion of these revisions involved baselines for mortality objectives which were revised when the Census Bureau released updated 1980–1989 intercensal population estimates based on the 1990 census. The development of new computational procedures has also resulted in baseline changes (e.g., see race-specific infant mortality, and American Indians and Alaska Natives, below). For several other objectives, the baselines have been changed because of modifications in methodology, typographical errors, changes in data sources, or because the baseline data were based on preliminary analyses. The revised baselines will be published in the 1992 Healthy People 2000 Review, released with Health United States. In addition, the Centers for Disease ControI and Prevention (CDC) will incorporate any revised baseline data into its computerized inventory and monitoring data base, described below. The baseline revisions will be discussed in detail in a future issue of Statistical Notes. Tracking Variables NCHS has received a number of questions about specific measures and data sources used to track each objective. Although many of the objectives have a well-defined method for tracking, accompanying baseline data reflecting that measure, and an implied or obvious data source, there are objectives for which this is not the case. In some instances, a data source is not well-defined, but the baseline shown implies a specific tracking measure. In others, the baseline is a proxy measure, with more appropriate data expected in the future. For some broad objectives, more specific tracking, by proxy, can give valuable information. Finally, there are objectives for which baseline data …