Public health measures, undertaken by public health departments, encourage healthy lifestyles and prevent individuals within communities from developing illnesses or becoming injured. However, many people outside of the discipline do not understand the importance of the study of population health.
Following is a basic outline of population health, how it differs from and complements public health, and how it is useful to policy makers.
1. A Broad Field of Inquiry
Population health is a field that centers on the health challenges and outcomes for a group of people. Population health researchers focus on how the results of various health practices are distributed across a population and from one population to another. The groups are typically classified by national or community boundaries or by classifications based on ethnicity, employment, disability status or other specific designations.
2. Population Health vs. Public Health
The term “distribution” is key to differentiating the concept of population health from public health. Population health not only refers to the health-specific outcomes of a defined group, but to the ways in which health outcomes are distributed across that group and others. Population health is also distinct from fields such as social epidemiology.
Another key concept that differentiates population health from other disciplines is its emphasis on examining patterns and interactions.
Specifically, the field of population health encompasses the outcomes of health practices and patterns of health-related factors, as well as policies that bridge these two components.
Local and state agencies are charged with promoting public health to prevent the spread of disease and address problems associated with environmental degradation. In addition, today’s broader view of public health incorporates concepts based on population health, thus creating and maintaining new relationships that use the insights and capabilities of diverse groups of people to promote practical means of improving the health of individuals, families and entire communities.
3. Population Health Methods
Population health investigators concentrate on system-wide disparities in health outcomes across entire populations. They take a longitudinal view, preferring to discover how the various factors they study influence the course of life for an individual or society. Their work is complex: It involves looking at a web of interactions among determinants, as well as the biological paths that tie them to larger health outcomes.
The health of individuals and overall population health outcomes are determined by a variety of factors. They include physical and social environments, genetic heritage, personal self-care behaviors and the workings of entire health care systems. Employment status and income, educational level, social support systems and culture also play a role in the intricate web of influences. These factors generally fall outside the range of public health work.
From the vantage point of population health, there is a benefit to merging a variety of data and insights across multiple areas that have a major impact on health. While population health investigators generally conduct studies on single factors and outcomes, they provide important pieces of a much larger puzzle.
4. A Perspective with Real-World Benefits
Population health is of great interest to government and nonprofit agencies and to officials charged with managing health policies.
For example, a certain population may have a large proportion of individuals in good health, thus producing an overall picture of good health for that population. Yet that same group may also contain a much smaller subset of people with serious health conditions.
Information from population health studies can call attention to the problem and provide useful data to policy makers so they may address it and attempt to solve it.
5. Criticism of the Scope of the Discipline
Critics of the discipline of population health consider its mandate so broad that, by encompassing such a large universe of data, it fails to provide actionable information to guide future policy.
Yet proponents point out that there is no government agency or organization whose sole role is to facilitate improvements in the general health of US citizens. Advocacy organizations, nonprofits and government agencies instead concentrate on a specific health condition or problem, which leaves many others open for investigation at a macro level.
6. A Foundational Text
A seminal publication about population health developed out of a Canadian initiative.
Experts refer to the 1994 book, Why Are Some People Healthy and Others Not? The Determinants of Health of Populations, as one of the major texts of the study of population health. The book was the product of the efforts of a population health program at the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research.
7. Ongoing Theoretical and Practical Work
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta maintains a division of population health to manage programs and initiatives related to various aspects of the discipline such as alcoholism, aging, sleep disorders and health in the workplace.
Over the last few years, the division published a number of monographs, including a study measuring the impact of fall-related injuries across multiple states; another study on senior citizens’ quality of life as gauged against age-related health problems, as well as one linking employers’ promotion of health information to cancer prevention.
In addition, the National Academy of Medicine supports a Roundtable on Population Health Improvement. One example of the roundtable’s work — and a helpful nexus between population health and public health — is its 2015 workshop that resulted in a summary “Collaboration Between Health Care and Public Health”. Organizers of the workshop requested presentations dealing with the intersection of population-focused programs to improve public health and the clinical provision of health care.
