Improving Population Health

Increased Public Health Investment Is Necessary But Not Sufficient

By David A. Kindig, MD, PhD

Last week I summarized the IOM’s new report on For the Public’s Health: Investing in a Healthier Future. The entire 3-part series is extremely important from a policy perspective and should be on every population health advocate’s reading list.

I praised the report as a whole but also promised a critique. The crux of my argument is that to achieve the Committee’s ambitious goals, we need to think beyond governmental public health. The suggested doubling of the budget for governmental public health, which seems reasonable for the set of minimum public health services, is necessary but not nearly sufficient to achieve their population health improvement goals.

The IOM Reports on Investing in a Healthier Future

By David A. Kindig, MD, PhD

I’ve been waiting with anticipation for last week’s IOM report on For the Public's Health: Investing in a Healthier Future, from the IOM Committee on Public Health Strategies to Improve Health. This is the third of three reports. The first report was released in December 2010 and focused on measurement of population health and related accountability at all levels of government. The second report was released in June 2011 and reflected the committee’s thinking about legal and public policy reform such as health departments’ powers, duties, and limitations as defined in enabling statutes and the use of legal and policy tools to improve the public’s health.

The third report addresses the critical issue, in a time of declining resources, of public health resource needs and approaches to addressing them in a “predictable and sustainable manner to ensure a robust population health system.” Given my many calls for dependable revenue streams for population health improvement, this clearly was a must-read for me.

The Link Between Income and Health

By David A. Kindig, MD, PhD

Listening to the national conference call for the release of the 2012 County Heath Rankings last week, I was struck by the number of questions regarding the socioeconomic factors in the model. It made me recall the early morning call from a small town reporter when we released the first Wisconsin County Rankings in 2003, saying “do you mean that county income levels might be as important as the number of uninsured or the smoking rates?”

This concept is better understood today than it was in 2003, but it is still hard to communicate. We accept the health-compromising effects of smoking and lack of health care access, but how education and income ‘get under the skin” to produce disease and death is less obvious. Yet a growing body of literature supports this finding, and is the reason why we give social factors a weighting of 40% in the County Health Rankings model.

This week we’re calling attention to a study I co-authored with one of our PhD candidates, Erika Cheng. The article, Disparities in premature mortality between high and low income U.S. counties, appears in the April 2012 issue of Preventing Chronic Disease.

Movin' Down the Road to Health

By Julie Willems Van Dijk, RN, PhD

On April 3^rd you received your annual check-up of your community’s health -- the 2012 County Health Rankings. You’ve had a chance to review what’s going well for your community and where you are lagging behind others. But now what? What can you do to make your community a healthier place?

Since the inaugural release of the County Health Rankings in 2010, hundreds of people have contacted us to ask these questions and we’ve directed them to our Take Action cycle. It’s a simple and straightforward process. Work with other key partners, because we know solving issues like poor high school graduation rates, unemployment, excessive drinking, unhealthy air, or inadequate health care require the wisdom and resources of people from all walks of life. Gather information. Set priorities. Find the most effective approaches to address your priorities and then just do it!

County health ranks -- Are they a'changin?

By Bridget Booske Catlin, PhD, MHSA

It’s ranking season again (and I’m not talking about NCAA basketball) – the 2012 County Health Rankings will be available tomorrow (April 3, 2012). Since this is our third year of releasing the Rankings for all 50 states, we are fielding questions such as what has changed since last year? If not much has changed, why should anyone pay attention?