Key Objectives:
The terms public health and population health are being used interchangeably. While public health has traditionally been the function of government agencies, population health seems to be the term when public health practice extends beyond governmental settings. Thus, there is need to streamline this emerging field of practice. Questions arise as to whether or not population health is an outcome of an upgraded public health practice or a domain in itself. This discourse explores these concepts and aims to define the skills necessary for fulfilling the goals of population health, while discussing how best to identify population health practitioners.
Brief Summary:
As society evolves, new models for handling health problems are developed. Earlier models of public health practice focused on health as an outcome related to disease eradication, control, or prevention. While the public health 1.0 model focused on disease prevention and new treatment techniques and discoveries such as vaccines and antibiotics, public health 2.0 focuses on assessment, policy development, and assurance. Advocates for an upgraded public health 3.0 model champion a practice relying on collaborations and system-level thinking targeting the social determinants of heath. (DeSalvo et al., 2016). Similarly, population health focuses on increased cross-sector collaborations, stakeholder engagements across non-traditional lines, and innovative approaches as the new way for improving the community’s health. Engaging communities in user-driven health outcome deliverables is considered pivotal for population health. Practitioners in this space therefore must bridge silos, engage boundary-spanning stakeholders, and proffer long-lasting, sustainable solutions. Currently, skill sets needed to accomplish this are ill-defined. However, systems thinking, communication, informatics, stakeholder engagement strategies, and project management are often mentioned as needed population health competencies, in addition to traditional public health roles like epidemiology. Other competencies include an understanding of health financing, advocacy and policy making. This session invites participants to examine the domains of public health and population health, define population heath as a domain of practice or an outcome of public health 3.0, and determine what is required to align with the public health practice of the future to achieve their population health goals.