Population Health

Question 1

Population health

Answer 1

Population health is ‘the health outcomes of a group of individuals, including the distribution of such outcomes within the group’ (Kindig and Stoddart, 2003). While not a part of the definition itself, it is understood that such population health outcomes are the product of multiple determinants of health, including medical care, public health, genetics, behaviors, social factors, and environmental factors.” (Institute of Medicine, 2013)

Not just clinical outcomes of patients in a specific health plan

Preventative medicine
Environmental and lifestyle factors that reduce health risk or are protective of health
Empirically based screening, immunization, and procedural practices that are implemented on the population level

Question 2

What are levels of intervention from a population health perspective?

Answer 2

Physician practice
All patients within the entire practice (your patients and your partners’ patients) with the same disease, gender, age
Structural changes to the entire practice either physical or procedural
Example: on-site stress tests, for example

Hospital
Health care system
Structural changes implemented across an entire health care system
Example: system-wide approach to congestive heart failure

Community
Workplace interventions
Example: Wellness initiate-Fitness
School-based interventions
Example: Childhood obesity–school lunch nutrition
Community-level interventions
Example: Stroke response awareness

State-wide or national 
State level intervention
Example: Tobacco policy: Indoor air act
National Level Intervention
Example: HIV/AIDS