Since the term "population health" was introduced to the healthcare industry, it has been used in policy discussion and has inspired new academic departments and institutes, but what does it really mean?
In 2003, David Kindig, MD, PhD, and Greg Stoddart, PhD, defined population health as "the health outcomes of a group of individuals, including the distribution of such outcomes within the group." In a recent Health Affairs blog, Dr. Kindig examine how the use of the term has changed.
Dr. Kindig is emeritus professor of population health sciences and emeritus vice-chancellor for health sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, School of Medicine. He also co-directs the Robert Wood Johnson Health and Society Scholars Program in Wisconsin, serves as senior advisor to the UW Population Health Institute and co-chairs the Institute of Medicine Roundtable on Population Health Improvement.
The original use of the term population health emphasized the economic tradeoffs of treating populations and how the most health return can be produced from the next dollar invested, such as expanding insurance coverage, reducing smoking rates or increasing early childhood education.
In recent years, the increasing emphasis on social determinants, health disparities and the development of the triple aim have driven the definition of population health to change.
"That is not ideal, because I believe that defining population health in terms of clinical populations draws attention away from the critical role that non-clinical factors such as education and economic development play in producing health," wrote Dr. Kindig.
His suggestion? Use different definitions in different contexts.
"While the traditional population health definition can be reserved for geographic populations, new terms such as population health management or population medicine are useful to describe activities limited to clinical populations and a narrower set of health outcome determinants," wrote Dr. Kindig.
Although the semantics of the terminology may seem esoteric, Dr. Kindig argued the importance of using terms that allow everyone in the industry to understand one another.
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