How do we move from supporting sick individuals to creating healthy communities? Allen et al 1 recently laid out their vision of:
‘… a near future where practices collaborate to share data and work alongside public health teams, patients, and local organisations to proactively engage with communities to make them more health-promoting places to grow, learn, work, and age. GPs would help identify modifiable determinants and support the development of interventions to address them.’
We propose a new workforce role that could help to make this vision a reality.
POPULATION HEALTH
Population health is the improvement of health and wellbeing, and the reduction of health inequalities, across an entire population. The King’s Fund outlined four pillars for population health: wider determinants of health; health behaviours and lifestyles; places and communities we live in; and an integrated health and care system.2
The shift towards population health is part of a wider global trend. The World Health Organization’s Declaration of Astana 3 and the unanimously adopted United Nations General Assembly resolution on universal health coverage4 name the integration of public health and primary care as the main vehicle for delivering better health outcomes. Co-producing population-level interventions to promote health and prevent disease is becoming a central activity of primary care all over the world.
This fits with the social model of health that sees …
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