National Academy of Sciences, Institute of Medicine

The idea of keeping entire communities healthy is often termed population health.

Increasingly, New York—along with the rest of the nation—recognizes that an affordable health system needs to place greater emphasis on keeping people healthy so there is less need for expensive health care services. As NYHealth moved forward in diabetes prevention, the Foundation focused more on prevention and efforts to improve population health, with an aim to advance initiatives and policies that keep people from developing this chronic condition. At the time, health care providers had found it difficult to identify concrete interventions that accomplish the goal of improving population health. With funding from NYHealth, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) convened a roundtable featuring experts from multiple sectors to develop ideas for interventions that keep people healthy and reduce the need for expensive medical care.

Under this grant, IOM convened an initial meeting with roundtable members, including NYHealth, to develop an annual agenda, identify topics of interest to pursue through workshops, and select themes for discussion papers and commentaries. Roundtable members led six workshops focused on concrete actions to accelerate community and state improvements in population health and inform changes in policy to support these improvements. Members of the roundtable also co-authored discussion papers with recommendations to move forward; workshop proceedings; and summary briefs that highlighted best practices, scientific evidence, and innovative ideas that improve population health. With this project, NYHealth was among the leading organizations working on this issue nationally.