NSG-440: population health course focuses on the role of the nurse in population-focused health, examining population-based systems, and community, individual, and family-focused population health practice. Emphasis is on addressing issues of overall health improvement, the broad determinants of health, and the elimination of health disparities among vulnerable populations. Most importantly, a nsg-440: population health course teaches students how to apply epidemiologic concepts and evidence-based research to the study of disease and develop strategies to promote health and prevent disease in diverse communities and populations with an emphasis on community-based assessment and partnership as well as broader population-focused interventions.
Table of Contents
What is population health?
Population health is the health outcomes of a group of individuals, including the distribution of such outcomes within the group. Therefore, the study of population health concentrates on the health outcomes of individuals within a certain group. Although different populations often include individuals living within cities, states, or countries, a population group can include people in a certain ethnic group, in the same age bracket, individuals of the same gender, professionals in the same occupation, or people with a certain disorder.
Population health professionals seek to comprehend how social environments, genetics, medical care, geographic locations, behavior, and other factors have an impact on the distribution of health in the population. Therefore, after the specific health concerns are revealed in a studied population, communities can address those problems and improve health results.
Approaches to population health in rural communities.
There are several approaches that can be used to improve and ensure population health in rural communities. These approaches include the following:
- Recognizing the social determinants of health in the community.
- Engaging the community.
- Strengthening partnerships and collaboration.
- Finding strengths, assets, challenges, and barriers.
- Coordinating and guaranteeing access to healthcare services through care coordination strategies, networks and coalitions, integrated services, and transportation.
How does the future of population health look like?
Population health has shown tremendous improvements as a field over the last several years and continues to grow insignificantly. Understanding populations in specific health care systems is one important aspect of population health that will greatly impact the future of the field. This means that health care organizations are able to gain insights about their patient populations to gather data and provide better health services.
What is the difference between population health and public health?
To understand the importance of population health, we need to first comprehend the relationship between population health and public health. The following are the subtle differences between the two terms:
- Public health involves a wide range of interests than population health. Public health professionals concentrate on promoting health and wellness across entire populations and communities. On the other hand, population health deals with the health condition of a group of individuals. It also includes individuals who belong to similar racial backgrounds, occupations, or other defined populations.
- Policies, health education, and research for disease prevention fall under the category of public health whereas population health involves a focus on the treatment outcomes of individuals within specific groups.
- Individual citizens might experience the influence of public health research through initiatives that are designed to improve personal habits such as hygiene and diet. On the other hand, population health researchers assess how differences in income, education, and medical access affect the well-being of a specific group of individuals.
- Public health departments are responsible for avoiding environmental hazards, encouraging healthy behaviors, and providing awareness of epidemics. On the other hand, local care providers and health agencies establish initiatives to treat threats that may affect the entire state populations.
Benefits of population health.
- It focuses on people. Therefore, it aims at improving the health of fellow humans and lifting up all health aspects of society.
- It concentrates on ensuring patient satisfaction while still seeing better health in entire groups or populations.
- Population health studies enable health care organizations to provide improved access to care.
- Population health also promotes better patient engagement and empowers the population to better manage their own health.
