Population Health: Proactive Solutions for Healthy Outcomes

Social environments contribute directly to a wide range of health outcomes. The social determinants of health refer to conditions in the environments in which people live, work, play, worship, and age. Traditionally, the public health sector factored the social determinants of health into practice, while the hospital sector focused on individual factors, such as illness and the provision of episodic curative services. However, health care in the US is evolving. These separate views are no longer sufficient, and population health is now considered the solution. Population health addresses the full range of the determinants of health and involves measuring and optimizing the health of groups by embracing the traditional social determinants of health as well as health care delivery. The purpose of this article is to provide an overview of population health, highlight examples of how it is taking shape in Hawai‘i, and discuss how the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa School of Nursing and Dental Hygiene (UHM SONDH) is preparing its graduate nursing students for new roles in population health in Hawaiʻi.

The full Spotlight on Nursing column can be viewed at this link.