“Practical Playbook” Initiative Heralds A New Era for Population Health

A new initiative being launched today will usher in a new era for population health, whose progress historically has been stymied by multiple stakeholders who don’t communicate, using a variety of unvalidated models. This initiative, A Practical Playbook: Public Health and Primary Care Together, centers on an interactive tool that navigates users through the stages of integrated population health improvement. The initiative was developed by the de Beaumont Foundation, Duke Community and Family Medicine, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“This effort is innovative in that we are trying to find a way to reinvent health care, moving it out of a sick care system and into something that really starts in the community,” says Brian Castrucci, chief program and strategy director at the de Beaumont Foundation. “We want to leverage the 300-year-old infrastructure of public health to support the fabulous work that primary care providers are already doing.

“Much of the excellent care that people receive from clinicians is lost when they return to a community that is antagonistic to health. Public health is positioned to maximize the impact of care by ensuring the health of our communities.” Integration and partnership between local, state, and regional primary care groups and public health officials are central to the Practical Playbook approach. The tools and resources available on the site guide users through six stages of integrated population health improvement.