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Final Commissioned Paper: An Environmental Scan of Integrated Approaches for Defining and Measuring Total Population Health
The Opportunity
Population health is generally understood as a systems-level concept that describes health outcomes as measured through a broad spectrum of public health, clinical care, and socio-economic determinants. Population health not only focuses on disease across multiple sectors, but also health and wellbeing, prevention and health promotion. Identifying valid and reliable measures of performance across these multiple sectors can be challenging. Data collection, health assessments at individual and aggregate levels, payment structures, quality of patient care and public health interventions, and other components present challenges in shaping widespread, standardized implementation of population health measures, but overcoming these challenges is critical to any strategy to understand and improve it.
Given the multi-dimensional focus of population health, developing activities to strengthen the measurement and analysis of population health trends can be best accomplished using a collaborative approach that includes public health, healthcare delivery systems, and other key sectors whose policies influence health; inadequate preventive and behavioral choices can have significant negative impact on health outcomes and economic stability, and these along with other determinants contribute to sixty percent of American deaths. The Population Health project seeks to expand NQF’s portfolio of preventive services and broader population health measures.
About the Project
The Population Health project is being conducted in two phases. The first phase focuses on provider-level preventive services and immunization measures. Phase 2 will assess population level measures. This phase leads with foundational work in population health, including an environmental scan of existing measures and gap analysis.
The scan will be an integral part of a commissioned paper that will outline a set of principles regarding population health measures, including an analytic framework for assessing and measuring population-level measures; guidance on the application of NQF's evaluation criteria for population health measures; and identify priority areas for measurement and quality improvement. The environmental scan and commissioned paper will inform the Call for Population Health Measures and evaluation.
Project Funding
This project is funded under NQF’s contract with the Department of Health and Human Services.
Related NQF Work
Population Health: Prevention Endorsement Maintenance
Contact Information
For further information, contact Elisa Munthali, MPH, at 201-783-1300 or via email populationhealth@qualityforum.org.
Through this second phase of the Population Health project NQF seeks to identify and endorse broad-based, population-level measures, including those that focus on healthy behaviors for public reporting and quality improvement. In addition, NQF-endorsed® consensus standards that were endorsed prior to 2009 will undergo maintenance review.
This commissioned paper will identify an analytic framework for population health assessment and measurement. An integral component of the paper is an environmental scan of existing population health measures and measurement gap analysis. The paper and scan will inform the upcoming Call for Population Health Measures. The final draft will be available for public and member comment in April 2012. Prior to Member and public comment, the Steering Committee will hold a series of conference calls to review the initial draft of the paper and to finalize the framework and Call for Population Health Measures.
Final Commissioned Paper (PDF)
The Steering Committee met via conference call on April 11 to review the comments received during the comment period.
The Steering Committee will begin meeting on May 30, 2012 to review the submitted measures.
Measures to be Reviewed
0023: Body Mass Index (BMI) in adults > 18 years of age
0024: Weight Assessment and Counseling for Nutrition and Physical Activity for Children/Adolescents
0029: Counseling on physical activity in older adults - a. Discussing Physical Activity, b. Advising Physical Activity
0421: Preventive Care and Screening: Body Mass Index (BMI) Screening and Follow-Up
1690: Adult BMI Assessment
1999: Late HIV diagnosis
2014: Place of birth
2018: Year of arrival to the United States (for the foreign born)
2020: Adult Current Smoking Prevalence
The Population Health Phase Two Steering Committee will meet May 30-31, 2012. The meeting is open to NQF members and the public. It will be held at the National Quality Forum, 1030 15th Street, NW, Ninth Floor Conference Center, Suite 950 West, Washington, DC. Space is limited.
We respectfully request that you register so that we can adequately anticipate the number of seats that will be needed.
No appeals were filed during this time.
