New report provides framework for implementing population health initiatives

A new report by the Department of Population Health at NYU Langone Health sets out a framework for community and population health management plans to guide efforts to address the social determinants of health and improve health quality in clinical and geographic populations.

The report, published in Academic Medicine, argues that while American medical centers are acknowledging the importance of improving population health, few frameworks exist to help connect research, education, and clinical practice to improve patient experience and reduce costs.

The report identifies the main challenge of implementing population health frameworks into public health plans as a lack of financial models that reward healthcare delivery systems for investing in the health of geographic populations. Another challenge is a lack of clarity as to which groups are responsible for taking the lead on healthcare delivery for population health programs.

The report offers a generalized framework to promote population health and outlines four steps in a strategy for health improvement that researchers say can be used as a case study for other organizations and researchers working on population health management plans.

1. Engage community - Goals must align with real-world priorities. To ensure this happens, program organizers must engage a diverse set of stakeholders, including community partners, at the research stage in order to improve outcomes of shared interest.
2. Turn information into insight - Research must integrate both qualitative and quantitative approaches as well as spatial analytics to address place-based social determinants, which are crucial to engaging community population needs.
3. Transform healthcare - To transform delivery of care from volume-based to value-based care, new models must be developed for how populations access care, which involve improving and linking community-based, office-based, and hospital-based care.
4. Shape policy - Conduct policy-focused work to expand evidence base for evaluating policies that advance population health.

The report claims that this framework can help bridge disciplines and engage new partnerships among academic medicine, clinical practice, and public health groups. 

This framework was developed based on results from a research program launched in 2012 by NYU School of Medicine’s Department of Population Health. The research program aims to improve health and reduce inequalities in populations defined by race, ethnicity, geography, and other factors known collectively as the social determinants of health, using education targeted toward population-level thinking.