The National Health Observances Toolkit

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Health observances are special days, weeks or months designated by government, health organizations and medical professionals devoted to promoting specific health topics. For 2010, there are over 175 national health observances!

National Health Observances


The Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion (ODPHP), part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, recently launched the National Health Observances Toolkit to help promote certain observances. Each month, healthfinder.gov features one health observance and provides a specific health observance toolkit, which can be viewed online or downloaded in PDF format. Each toolkit contains information and ideas to engage the public in health promotion activities:

  • Sample announcements
  • Sample Tweets
  • E-cards
  • Web badges
  • Actions to get involved
  • Related tools on healthfinder.gov
  • Resources

They also provide tips to plan and promote a National Health Observance.

The ODPHP coordinates the official list of American National Health Observances by providing an annual calendar that includes all observances, along with sponsoring organization and contact information. The complete listing of monthly health observances can be found here: 2010 National Health Observances
A PDF of the list is also available.

Additional Calendars for Health Observances

If you’re looking for health observances focused on a particular topic, here are several other resources (note that some observances may overlap with those found in the ODPHP National Health Observances calendar located on healthfinder.gov).

About the Author

Walter Jessen, Ph.D. is a Data Scientist, Digital Biologist, and Knowledge Engineer. His primary focus is to build and support expert systems, including AI (artificial intelligence) and user-generated platforms, and to identify and develop methods to capture, organize, integrate, and make accessible company knowledge. His research interests include disease biology modeling and biomarker identification. He is also a Principal at Highlight Health Media, which publishes Highlight HEALTH, and lead writer at Highlight HEALTH.