Frequently Asked Questions

What is Healthy Alaskans?

Healthy Alaskans is Alaska’s state health improvement plan; it is a roadmap for how we as a state can improve on the most significant health issues that we face, at the community level, at the organizational level, and at the individual and family level. Alaska is unique in that it is the only state health improvement plan in the nation that is led by a state and tribal partnership, the State of Alaska Department of Health and Social Services and the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium. Healthy Alaskans brings together partners from many sectors across the state to improve health and ensure health equity for all Alaskans through shared understanding, united efforts, and collective accountability.

What are health objectives?

The Healthy Alaskans 2030 plan contains 15 health priority topics with 30 health objectives, each with a target to reach by 2030. These priorities were selected based on data and input from Alaskan residents and subject matter experts. Each health objectives has suggested strategies and actions that can be adopted in order to help move us as a state toward the goals that we set. Many of these strategies and actions can be adopted at the individual and community level; actions that we can take within our own lives and families such as reducing the number of sugary drinks we consume to prevent obesity, or increasing our physical activity to prevent heart disease.

Click here to see the new health objectives and priority health topics.

What is the process by which the health objectives are selected?

The state health improvement planning process is a multi-partner and stakeholder engagement process. In order to arrive at the health objectives that are in the plan, a  statewide health assessment was conducted which included gathering data on deaths and hospitalizations, gathering input directly from Alaskans through an online survey, in person interviews and community listening sessions, as well as a state public health system assessment. The data and assessment results were analyzed and several workgroup meetings were held to prioritize and select the most significant health issues to be included in the plan.

Each year we publish two scorecards that show how we are doing with achieving the goals for each objective; one scorecard for all Alaskans statewide and one for the Alaska Native population. This is to allow us to identify health disparities among the Alaska Native population and really focus some of the efforts on addressing those health disparities in the spirit of health equity.