Getting Started on Population Health Assessment
By Alexandra Piatkowski
Want to get a better understanding of the health of the population you are serving? In this blog, we’re sharing some of our favourite resources to help you get started on population health assessment.
At Health Commons, we pride ourselves on taking a population health approach through our work. An important component of this approach is better understanding the health of populations in order to make evidence-informed decisions about how we can improve health outcomes.
What is population health assessment?
Population health assessment is an evidence-informed process that involves defining and assessing the health status and needs of a community to support community engagement and health system planning.
Why do it?
The assessment serves as the backbone for any population health management strategy. It allows partners to establish a shared understanding of strengths and opportunity areas, to prioritize community needs, and to collaboratively build effective solutions. For OHTs, this is especially critical during the planning stages – understanding your attributed population, selecting your Year 1 population(s), and setting priorities for implementing the OHT model.
Where to start?
Take a look at the population health assessment we did with Muskoka and Area OHT and an example from Mississauga OHT for inspiration.
A process like this involves integrating different types of data from a variety of sources. The image below provides a summary of types of data you may include in your population health assessment:
To help you get started, here are four data resources you can use right now for population health assessment:
Ontario Community Health Profiles Partnership: Researchers at St. Michael’s Hospital Centre for Urban Health Solutions (Dr. Rick Glazier) analyze data at the Institute of Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences and report on population health indicators.
Public Health Ontario Snapshots: This “collection of interactive map-based dashboards showing both geographic and temporal trends for key public health indicators by public health unit (PHU) and Ontario overall,” allows you to compare your geography to Ontario, or to other nearby geographies. It can also help you easily look at trends over time.
Health Quality Ontario System Performance: Standardized indicators that track system performance across sectors of the Ontario health care system.
Canadian Institute for Health Information - Your Health System In Depth: Standardized indicators that measure how well the Canadian health care system is performing.
Resources from Public Health Training for Equitable Systems Change (PHESC): This health system partnership strives to equip public professional to contribute to equitable systems change. Their compiled resources can help you get started on population health assessment.
Tools You Can Use
Grab-a-slide: Understanding the Population Health Assessment Process
Related Blog Posts
References
Association for Community Health Improvement. (2017). Community Health Assessment Toolkit.
Mississauga OHT. (2019). Overview of Mississauga Ontario Health Team Full Application.
Ontario Community Health Profiles Partnership. (2020). Ontario Community Health Profiles.
Public Health Ontario. (2020). Snapshots.
Health Quality Ontario System Performance. (2020). System Performance.
Canadian Institute for Health Information. (2020). Your Health System In Depth.
Public Health Training for Equitable Systems Change. (2019). Population Health Assessment.