Final answer:
The overarching goal of Healthy People 2010 was the elimination of health disparities, aiming to increase quality of life and equality in health across different population segments in the United States.
Step-by-step explanation:
The main, overarching goal for Healthy People 2010 was the elimination of health disparities. This initiative set forth a comprehensive set of objectives to promote health and prevent disease across the United States. The two primary overarching goals were to:
- Increase the quality and years of healthy life for individuals.
- Eliminate health disparities among different segments of the population, including those based on race, ethnicity, gender, income, education, disability, and geographic location.
Healthy People 2010 aimed to address critical problems in health, set priorities, and explore strategies to design sustainable health education and disease prevention interventions. With an understanding that disparities in health were problems with solutions, it also sought to increase community awareness and articulate valid reasons to allocate resources to reduce and ultimately eliminate disparities. The WHO's Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), particularly MDGs 4, 5, and 6, similarly targeted large-scale health concerns aimed at reducing child mortality, improving maternal health, and combating diseases like HIV/AIDS and malaria. However, Healthy People 2010 focused more specifically on disparities within the United States.