Primary Submission Category: Health care/services
A Population Health Impact Pyramid for Health Care
Authors: Philip Alberti Heather Pierce
Presenting Author: Philip Alberti*
Although health care organizations are increasingly focused on population health and health equity, work-to-date has been largely siloed, rarely evaluated, and typically untethered from a central, cohesive theory of change and practice. In a paper to-be-published in the Spring 2023 volume of Milbank Quarterly, we propose that the health care system must become the best partner it can be in the multisector collaborations necessary to shift underlying structures and systems toward health opportunity for all communities. To become that best partner, health care needs an operationalizable framework that plays to medical care organizations’ strengths and ‘right-sizes’ their roles and spheres of influence.
We have reimagined Frieden’s “Health Impact Pyramid” as a “Population Health Impact Pyramid for Health Care” to demonstrate how the field of medicine can maximally contribute to the health of populations, not just patients, through specific actions and collaborations. Seven tiers of action emerged, ranging from health professions education to changing the health care context to advocacy and the political determinants of health, with opportunities for health care organizations to act across each. While tiers differ in terms of their relative effectiveness and requisite political commitments, action across each is essential to health care’s comprehensive population health approach.
For this workshop we will review the current context and this new framework, discuss considerations for its implementation and refinement, and then engage the audience in a discussion about how a similar framework might apply to their own fields and sectors and discuss a process for developing a complementary research agenda.