Free Population Health Measurement: Purposes And Key Determinants Essay Example

Population Health means health outcomes and their distribution within the group of people. In other words, it is a health approach with a purpose of improving health of human population in whole. This improvement is achieved due to number of wellness activities aimed to support the purpose. However, in order to manage this improvement, population health should be measured and determined. Three main purposes of population health measurement are improvement, accountability, and research. The aim of this paper is to overview and to analyze these purposes and their connection to each other, and to define key determinants of population health.
The first main purpose for management in population health is improvement. The common strategy for this purpose runs that measurements are limited, learning should come out of minimally obtained information, and hypotheses are changeable and flexible. Basically, the model for improvement consists of two parts. The first part frames the way of improvement; it requires the understanding of what we try to accomplish, how we know that one or another change is an improvement, and what change we can make in order to get an improvement. The second part is made of permanently repeated cycles of Plan-Do-Study-Act testing and putting into effect an understanding of improvement from the first part. In other words, we gather information on performance, analyze it, and use our knowledge to come to decision regardless further activities; in a while, we repeat this process again. In order to performance improvement, we can use predictive modeling that allows us mathematically predict possibilities of one or another outcome basing on the correlation between preceding and following ones.
The second main purpose for management is accountability. The common strategy for this purpose is an estimation of current performance and gathering of all possible data. Measuring of accountability requires Triple Aim’s framework consisting of three components: population health, costs, and care. Population health measuring is made with the diagrams that connect determinants and outcome measures. Measuring of the care experience is done on the basis of the patients’ opinions. Measuring per capita cost, in turn, requires episode-based costing analysis. All data are gathered together and carefully analyzed.
The last main purpose is research. Research means discovering new knowledge that could have a wide range of applications. The purpose of research is based on careful tests and experiments, and confirmations of hypotheses. There are two main types of researches that it is necessary to distinguish from one another: efficacy and effectiveness. Efficacy means working under ideal conditions while effectiveness research relates to real clinical care. One of the examples of efficacy researches is clinical, or laboratory, trial based on a number of assumptions that do not intervene in one or another processes under ideal conditions, but have a significant impact on these processes in reality. Together with the effectiveness research, one more important type of health service research is cost-effectiveness research that adds to effectiveness economic considerations and combines two Triple Aim’s elements: health and cost.
The key determinants of population health are social environment, physical environment, genetic environment, heath care, and individual behavior. Genetic environment means genetic composition given us by nature. Physical environment relates to quality of air, water, neighborhoods, etc. Health care includes quality and cost of health services. Individual behavior includes our habits and way of life. Social environment relates to such social elements as education, income, social class, and social support.
Improvement, accountability, and research purposes of measuring population health consistently follow each other. Improvement means lack of data and lots of hypotheses, accountability, on contrary, concentrates on gaining and analyzing all possible data, and research combining improvement and accountability uses obtained due to data knowledge in order to prove hypotheses. Generally, population health is determined by five key factors: social environment, physical environment, genetic environment, health care, and individual behavior. The only one of them we can easily affect is individual behavior; only we ourselves define our habits, diet, exercise, and regular medical examinations. First and foremost, our health should be our own top concern.