Health communication (aka health marketing, social marketing) objectives for Healthy People were first developed for the 2010 objectives. As originally conceived, the health communication focus area was based on the notion that:

Health communication can contribute to all aspects of disease prevention and health promotion and is relevant in a number of contexts, including (1) health professional-patient relations, (2) individuals’ exposure to, search for, and use of health information, (3) individuals’ adherence to clinical recommendations and regimens, (4) the construction of public health messages and campaigns, (5) the dissemination of individual and population health risk infor-mation, that is, risk communication, (6) images of health in the mass media and the culture at large, (7) the education of consumers about how to gain access to the public health and health care systems, and (8) the development of telehealth applications.

The health communication objectives for 2010 are:

1. Increase [to 80%] the proportion of households with access to the Internet at home.
2. Improve the health literacy of persons with inadequate or marginal literacy skills.
3. Increase the proportion of health communication activities that include research and evaluation.
4. Increase the proportion of health-related World Wide Web sites that disclose information that can be used to assess the quality of the site.
5. Increase the number of centers for excellence that seek to advance the research and practice of health communication.
6. Increase the proportion of persons who report that their health care providers have satisfactory communication skills.

Source: Health Communication Focus Area, Healthy People 2010. US Department of Health and Human Services.