Table 1 Definitions of Population Health
Organization | Definition | Source |
|---|---|---|
Interdisciplinary Association for Population Health Science (IAPHS) | “Population health is the health of all people living in a given place, such as New York City, Kansas, or Bangladesh. It also refers to differences in health—for example, between the rich and poor. A population’s health is the product of many causes, operating at many levels ‘from cells to society.’” | |
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) | “…health behaviors and outcomes of a broad group of individuals, including the distribution of such outcomes affected by the contextual factors within the group.” | https://www.cms.gov/sites/default/files/2021-09/Population-Health-Measures.pdf |
National Quality Forum Prevention and Population Health Standing Committee | “Population health focuses on disease and illness but also on prevention and health promotion for an identified group of people. The result of these activities should achieve positive health outcomes within the identified population. Population health activities also look to reduce health inequities and disparities across populations.” | |
American Public Health Association (APHA) | “…the health outcomes of a group of individuals, including the distribution of such outcomes within the group” | |
Institute of Medicine (IOM) | It can be defined as what “we as a society do collectively to assure the conditions in which people can be healthy” | https://nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/1091/the-future-of-public-health |
New York State Department of Health | “Population health refers to the health status and health outcomes within a group of people rather than considering the health of one person at a time.” | https://www.health.ny.gov/events/population_health_summit/docs/what_is_population_health.pdf |
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) | “CDC views population health as an interdisciplinary, customizable approach that allows health departments to connect practice to policy for change to happen locally. This approach utilizes non-traditional partnerships among different sectors of the community – public health, industry, academia, health care, local government entities, etc. – to achieve positive health outcomes. Population health ‘brings significant health concerns into focus and addresses ways that resources can be allocated to overcome the problems that drive poor health conditions in the population…’” | |
Elmhurst University | Population health refers to the health outcomes of a defined group of people. More specifically, it includes how outcomes are distributed within the group. |