A Prevention Policy Framework For The Nation

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Abstract
Prologue: In 1980, the U.S. Public Health Service set out 226 health goals for 1990 that crossed public/ private-sector lines as well as intragovernmental boundaries. "There was no precedent for a decade-long health initiative, especially one conceived as a na- tional strategy rather than as a federal or even departmental long term plan," writes James O. Mason, assistant secretary for health, Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), in this article. Critics, however, faulted the 1990 objectives for problems with measurability and lack of good baseline data. In the spring of 1990, Sen. leff Bingaman (D-NM) held two hearings on such critiques. New health objectives for the year 2000 that will be released in Sep- tember 1990 will reject both the lessons learned over the previous decade and suggestions gathered from over 7,000 people in a three- year consensus development effort. In this attack, Mason describes the process and strategies behind setting the year 2000 goals. Ma- son, in his position of assistant secretary of health for just over one year, has emerged as an outspoken critic of the tobacco industry, following the lead of HHS Secretary Louis W. Sullivan. At the Sev- enth World Conference on Tobacco and Health in Australia this April, Mason said he was "appalled at the cynical marketing tech- niques of the tobacco companies." He added: "It is unconscionable for the mighty transnational tobacco companies-and three of the major ones are in the United States-to be peddling their poison abroad, particularly because their main targets are less-developed nations"-a statement at odds with the U.S. Trade Representa-

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