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What does population health mean? It is a huge concept - the health status of a large group, but what is its practical definition? How can it apply in an everyday setting? Its generally accepted definition is the wellness outcome of a group of individuals. This also includes how these outcomes are distributed within the group. What is the group specifically? It can actually be many different groups and they can be arranged by many different characteristics. The term only refers to human groups, not plants or animals. The group can be characterized by its geographic location (i.e., every person who lives in Alabama or in San Francisco), by their employer, by a disability, by ethnicity. Essentially, it is any group that shares one defining characteristic. One concept that seems very similar to population health is public health. Public health can be understood to be more specific. It, traditionally, is seen as the function of the government, including state, local, and federal, in terms of physical issues to the general populace, such as prevention of epidemics, encouraging healthy behaviors, and responding to environmental hazards. One effort to improve population health in the United States is a website called Healthy People 2020. It is the result of more than thirty years of work by the office of the Surgeon General of the United States and other organizations. The website presents 42 topics which it considers social determinants of health. These are the economic and social conditions, which have an effect on different people and groups and how they are distributed amongst the group. They are not individual risk factors, rather, they are factors, which are found in the conditions in which one lives and works. This means that if one was to move, change jobs, or effect another similar life change that this risk factor would be eliminated. Healthy People 2020 also presents more than 1,200 goals, which, if accomplished, would be beneficial to overall population health. The website also provides links to research about these goals and other topics, which allows the general public to be involved with improving their overall well being, and thus that of the whole population. Another effort is called population health management. It is simply the effort, which uses a variety of methods focusing on the individual, organizations, and cultural interventions to improve the rates of illness and death of certain groups. It is different from disease management, because it looks at chronic diseases in addition to infectious diseases. There are twelve goals of this practice, which include establishing and adhering to clinical practice guidelines; educating and engaging with patients; coordinating effective care; and tracking patient outcomes, among others. Concerned about the welfare of our Population's Health? Read more at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_health
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