The federal government's tracking system to gauge the outcomes of local health initiatives added three categories to its data collection efforts: social determinants; oral health; and maternal, infant and child health.

The new measures were added to nine existing categories of leading health indicators that the Obama administration will track as part of its national health goals, called Healthy People 2020, Dr. Howard Koh, assistant secretary for Health at HHS, said today at the annual meeting of the American Public Health Association. The categories were chosen because the administration viewed them as critical health issues that, if left unaddressed, can result in future public health problems.

Koh and other APHA speakers stressed the importance of adding social determinants to the list of key data areas that the federal government will track. These would include many factors outside of medicine, including the extent of local educational achievement, exercise amenities and healthy foods.

Also, Koh said the federal government will begin to require the use of more specific demographic individual characteristics in health surveys that it sponsors in the areas of race, ethnicity, sex, primary language and disability status. For example, instead of surveys just offering the respondents the option of identifying as Asian, they can now indicate they are Korean-American or Japanese-American, according to Koh. The greater specificity aims to highlight disparities in health status and target interventions to reduce these disparities.

Also, Koh said the administration plans to provide an unspecified amount of funding to help coordinate information between mobile health providers. For example, he said, about 3,000 “mobile health vans” provide care for up to 7.5 million people but little information is available on them and their patients.