Importance Of Population Health

Population health, what is it? The term is exactly what it sounds like, the health (more so health status at outcomes) of the population, whether it be by city, race, or age. Population health works to identify and remedy health determinants that affect different populations. These determinants can be social, economic, physical and individual/biological. The study of population health will then research the different types of health determinants and identify past, current and possible future health outcomes to improve the overall quality of health and healthcare. Population health is a new research area that has just recently started to gain some speed. As a nation, the United States is working towards the triple aim, improving care quality/outcomes,

The VHA has seen a rise in veterans who aren’t receiving the appropriate care. This may be due to a number of reasons, some of which being long wait times, distance from care centers (access), or the affordability of care. Working to reform healthcare, the VA needs to implement both short and long-term solutions, thus the implementation of population health. Population health will allow the VHA to identify what health disparities are occurring in different populations by gathering patient information at their visits. By gathering data, both patient information such as BMI and location information, the VHA will be able to start identifying trends and reoccurring issues by analyzing the information. As the VA Case Study points out, population health can be used to identify food disparities, which can then provide insight on why certain populations may have higher obesity

As a field, healthcare is currently working to build larger datasets, interoperability and user interfaces. These technologies alone can improve the information and process of gathering datasets. Just thinking back to the case studies completed this semester, even if full interoperability isn’t reached, data mining, federated databases, and data harmonizing allow for researchers to pull information from different sources without compromising the security and privacy of patients. This would require standards, foundational framework, and user participating resulting in uploaded datasets that can then be used for research in different ways. Lastly, the data that has been used for existing studies has been conducted in highly populated areas, not providing much information on rural areas, or areas in which access to healthcare is not as easily available. In order to truly work towards the overall health of our population, underserved populations need to be analyzed so that hopefully through population health objectives they can receive optimal access and