What is Population Health?
CDC views population health as an interdisciplinary, customizable approach that allows health departments to connect practice to policy for change to happen locally. This approach utilizes non-traditional partnerships among different sectors of the community – public health, industry, academia, health care, local government entities, etc. – to achieve positive health outcomes. Population health “brings significant health concerns into focus and addresses ways that resources can be allocated to overcome the problems that drive poor health conditions in the population.”
Two examples of strategies developed by CDC to address population health are:
- CDC’s 6|18 initiative for healthcare purchasers, payers, and providers
- The Health Impact in 5 Years (HI-5) initiative focused on community-level changes in 5 years
Public health works to protect and improve the health of communities through policy recommendations, health education and outreach, and research for disease detection and injury prevention. It can be defined as what “we as a society do collectively to assure the conditions in which people can be healthy” (Institute of Medicine, 1988). On the other hand, population health provides “an opportunity for health care systems, agencies and organizations to work together in order to improve the health outcomes of the communities they serve.”
- CDC 6|18 Initiative targets 6 common and costly health conditions with 18 proven interventions.
- CDC Health Impact in 5 Years (HI-5) Interventions initiative highlights 14 evidence-based community-wide population health interventions that improve the health of the community (not clinical/patient-oriented) and demonstrate positive health impact in 5 years or less and cost-effectiveness and savings over time.
- CDC National Leadership Academy for the Public’s Health (NLAPH) is a partnership between CDC’s Center for State, Tribal, Local, and Territorial Support and the Public Health Institute’s Center for Health Leadership and Practice. It develops leaders by bringing together teams from multiple sectors who actively engage their communities to improve population health and achieve health equity.
- CMS State Innovation Models Initiative of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) partners with states to advance multi-payer healthcare payment and delivery system reform models. Each state-led model aims to achieve better quality of care, lower costs, and improved health for the population of the participating states or territory. The initiative is testing the ability of state governments to utilize policy and regulatory levers to accelerate health system transformation to meet these aims.
- External Resources and Research
- DeSalvo K, O’Carroll P, Koo D, Auerbach J, Monroe J. Public health 3.0: time for an upgrade. Am J Public Health 2016;106(4):621–2.
- Kindig D, Stoddart G. What is population health? Am J Public Health 2003;93(3):380–3.
- Mays GP. Organizing and financing population health: systems, policies & incentives. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Population Health Fellowship Orientation, 2017. (PHWI presentation).
- National Association of Chronic Disease Directors. Health yeah! with Eric Kasowski. [Podcast].
- RESOLVE, Auerbach J. The high achieving health department in 2020 as the community chief health strategist. 2014.
- Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Building a culture of health. [website].