What is Population Health?

The term “population health” is often misunderstood. So, what does it really mean? Is it public health? How does the population differ from the public? David Kindig, a Senior Advisor at the Population Health Institute at the University of Wisconsin has been working on improving population health in his quest to make Wisconsin the healthiest state and is regarded as an authority on the topic. Kindig defines population health as the distribution of health outcomes within a population, the health determinants that influence distribution and the policies and interventions that impact the determinants. Mention of health determinants and policy clearly indicate that public health is a large component of population health, but that is not where it ends. The key difference between public and population health is the focus on health outcomes, which entails a clinical component as Dr. Abatemarco indicated in the last blog post. While population health is NOT public health the two are intertwined.

Population health is holistic. It seeks to reveal patterns and connections within and between multiple systems that can be analyzed in order to respond to the needs of the population. It must be interdisciplinary, collaborative and transparent. We have set out to create a learning environment for students here at Jefferson to learn these key concepts and develop population health leaders of the future. Many of our students have diverse backgrounds and that is the greatest asset, in my opinion, to the learning community. While the need for population health management is evident in every newspaper you pick up, news story you hear or journal article you read, our role is providing students with practical knowledge to be real change agents. With all of this in mind, we have been working to create a text describing these key concepts, which will serve as a resource for both students and professionals. Population Health: Innovation, Strategy and Practice will be published by Jones and Bartlett, Sudbury, Massachusetts in August 2010. Dr. David Nash, Dr. JoAnne Reifsnyder and I are collaborating from JSPH with Dr. Ray Fabius to edit this multi-authored text. We have engaged 32 authors from various backgrounds; medicine, public health, policy disease management, education, and industry. Our goal is to create a text that describes innovative approaches to address population health needs, provides strategies to work toward those goals and advises readers on how to integrate these concepts into practice or their daily work. I hope that you will share your comments and thoughts about the often misunderstood “population health” concept and look for our new book in late summer 2010!

Valerie Pracilio
Project Manger for Quality Improvement
Jefferson School of Population Health