Population Health – The Unfinished Journey Podcast with David Kindig: Episode 3, “What Is Population Health?”

In nine podcasts, David Kindig MD, PhD, a population health thought leader, is interviewed by Sanne Magnan MD, PhD about Kindig’s 50-year population health scholarly and policy journey, including many stories, anecdotes and takeaways. In our corresponding blog posts, we highlight some of the key moments and take-aways as a reminder for you to tune into previous and future podcasts. You can listen to Episode 1, “Once Upon a Time,” and Episode 2, “The Story Behind the Book ‘Purchasing Population Health.‘”

Overview

In this episode, Sanne and Dave pick up the story where they left off, discussing his book, Purchasing Population Health. They discuss the origins of the development of a useful definition of population health and how his definition has evolved to become simplified over time. This definition includes a discussion of health-adjusted life expectancy and the importance of understanding financial constraints in community investment choices.

Additionally, this episode clarifies the distinctions between population health, public health, and population medicine by discussing the role of authority, jurisdiction, and patient vs. population engagement.

Highlights

• Discussing the relative importance of more expansive versus simplified definitions of population health.
• Examining the idea that population health includes measuring both social determinants and specific measures of health outcomes that are fundamentally linked to equity.
• Identifying the jurisdictions of public health and population medicine in attempts to achieve health care quality.

Click Here to Listen to Episode 3

Please join us next time for Episode #4, “The Lonely Years,” as we continue exploring Fifty Years Pursuing Population Health with David Kindig: The Unfinished Journey.

You can find the references for today’s episode and more at www.populationhealth.org

References

1. Kindig D, Stoddart G. 2003. What is Population Health? American Journal of Public Health 93(3): 380-383.
2. Kindig D. 2015. What Are We Talking About When We Talk About Population Health? Health Affairs Blog April 6.
3. Roundtable on Population Health Improvement | National Academies