Development of leading health indicators that provide a clearly understandable and recognizable face for the full Healthy People 2010 agenda has enormous potential to exert positive influences on the public's awareness and practice of health promoting behaviors. This is especially true if the chosen set of indicators are meaningful to and can be acted upon by the lay public, with an emphasis on the inclusion of diverse population groups. This report contains a number of recommendations to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that address issues relevant to the composition of leading health indicator sets, data collection, data analysis, effective dissemination strategies, health disparities, and effective use of interagency collaborations to support the full implementation of the leading health indicator set. These recommendations reflect the committee's belief that achievement of the Healthy People 2010 overarching and enabling goals is possible, but only when national, state, and local health agencies establish collaborative partnerships with members and organizations representative of a wide array of diverse population groups and communities. These partnerships can yield significant and sustained changes in the health behaviors and health outcomes of the public. In the presence of collaborative, community-based partnerships, leading health indicators for Healthy People 2010 can be used as tools to mobilize efforts by the lay public and health professionals to become engaged in progress toward the health goals for the nation and to do so in a manner which prompts public understanding and policy actions related to the important determinants of that progress.