Tuesday, January 03, 2006
What is Population Health
The question of what is population health was only partly answered by the two required readings.
Contandriopoulos, C. How Canada's health care system compares with that of other countries: an overview. In: Forum national de la santé. Le secteur de la santé au Canada et ailleurs. Sainte-Foy, Qc: Editions MultiMondes; 1998.
Evans RG (2000). Canada. Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law, 25 (5): 890-897.
This appears to be normal due to the emerging nature of this area of study and the complex nature of the questions addressed. The historical shift from medicine to public health and health promotion, to population health is interesting and led me to further readings. These include David Mechanic’s ”Who Shall Lead: Is There a Future for Population Health?”, the Charter of Transdisciplinarity, the Ottawa Charter, Higginbotham et al.’s “Health Social Science”, and the Lalonde Report.
Reflecting on how these readings apply to the area of children and youth mental health, it is clear to me that although mental health is sometimes mentioned, it is a under-developed (or under-used) perspective. A search on PUBMED using the terms: population health, mental health, children, youth, adolescent, produced only six papers, the most useful being McLennan et. al.’s, “Canada’s programs to prevent mental health problems in children: the research-practice gap. This theme of addressing the research-practice gap was picked up in the Kickbusch paper under knowledge transfer. The relationship between knowledge transfer/exchange and population health appears strong but insufficiently researched and implemented. This would be an interesting paper.
What surprised me most from the readings from week two was the Evans paper. His demonstration that the Canadian health system is, for the most part, private but that insurance coverage is mainly public caused me to revisit my own preconceptions about what the Canadian health system is. The focus in my knowledge exchange work has been on incentives and infrastructure to support behavior from these incentives leading to more and more effective knowledge exchange. If, as Evans presents, most of the actors are private then my assumptions about their interactions within institutions and with the policies of various governments will have to be reworked.
The social determinants reading was a useful reference point for thinking about the complexity of factors which need to be addressed however; I need more information about how they interact with each other and what are the relative weights of each factor in differing circumstances. Again, mental health is mentioned in several places, with manifestations such as stress, suicide, and work satisfaction pointed to directly however, I do not have a clear sense of how to apply each of these determinants to an examination of the child and youth mental health system/context in Ontario. This is another interesting possibility for a paper.
The Contandriopoulos paper (NTS: met both father and son during the J.L Denis CHSRF evaluation in 2005-01, Montreal) provided a very useful view of where Canada places within the OECD. The cross-border competition for personnel and resources caused by the USA was clear. The outrageous costs incurred by the USA is a possibility of what costs could have been in Canada without the stabilizing effect that Medicare introduced in the late 1960’s.
It would have been interesting if the author had also analyzed the unit cost of service per person and looked at the distribution across the population. I presume that the USA and Mexico would start to look even more similar, with enormous differences in access across the population. I found the social determinant evidence linking relative population wealth to better health and longer life is very interesting and supported by what Contandriopoulos presented.
From the perspective of child and youth mental health, it could be an interesting study to look at what the expenditure comparisons are. I will have to look for more details of how the numbers presented can be broken down by treatment area. ¶ 10:08 p.m.
Contandriopoulos, C. How Canada's health care system compares with that of other countries: an overview. In: Forum national de la santé. Le secteur de la santé au Canada et ailleurs. Sainte-Foy, Qc: Editions MultiMondes; 1998.
Evans RG (2000). Canada. Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law, 25 (5): 890-897.
This appears to be normal due to the emerging nature of this area of study and the complex nature of the questions addressed. The historical shift from medicine to public health and health promotion, to population health is interesting and led me to further readings. These include David Mechanic’s ”Who Shall Lead: Is There a Future for Population Health?”, the Charter of Transdisciplinarity, the Ottawa Charter, Higginbotham et al.’s “Health Social Science”, and the Lalonde Report.
Reflecting on how these readings apply to the area of children and youth mental health, it is clear to me that although mental health is sometimes mentioned, it is a under-developed (or under-used) perspective. A search on PUBMED using the terms: population health, mental health, children, youth, adolescent, produced only six papers, the most useful being McLennan et. al.’s, “Canada’s programs to prevent mental health problems in children: the research-practice gap. This theme of addressing the research-practice gap was picked up in the Kickbusch paper under knowledge transfer. The relationship between knowledge transfer/exchange and population health appears strong but insufficiently researched and implemented. This would be an interesting paper.
What surprised me most from the readings from week two was the Evans paper. His demonstration that the Canadian health system is, for the most part, private but that insurance coverage is mainly public caused me to revisit my own preconceptions about what the Canadian health system is. The focus in my knowledge exchange work has been on incentives and infrastructure to support behavior from these incentives leading to more and more effective knowledge exchange. If, as Evans presents, most of the actors are private then my assumptions about their interactions within institutions and with the policies of various governments will have to be reworked.
The social determinants reading was a useful reference point for thinking about the complexity of factors which need to be addressed however; I need more information about how they interact with each other and what are the relative weights of each factor in differing circumstances. Again, mental health is mentioned in several places, with manifestations such as stress, suicide, and work satisfaction pointed to directly however, I do not have a clear sense of how to apply each of these determinants to an examination of the child and youth mental health system/context in Ontario. This is another interesting possibility for a paper.
The Contandriopoulos paper (NTS: met both father and son during the J.L Denis CHSRF evaluation in 2005-01, Montreal) provided a very useful view of where Canada places within the OECD. The cross-border competition for personnel and resources caused by the USA was clear. The outrageous costs incurred by the USA is a possibility of what costs could have been in Canada without the stabilizing effect that Medicare introduced in the late 1960’s.
It would have been interesting if the author had also analyzed the unit cost of service per person and looked at the distribution across the population. I presume that the USA and Mexico would start to look even more similar, with enormous differences in access across the population. I found the social determinant evidence linking relative population wealth to better health and longer life is very interesting and supported by what Contandriopoulos presented.
From the perspective of child and youth mental health, it could be an interesting study to look at what the expenditure comparisons are. I will have to look for more details of how the numbers presented can be broken down by treatment area. ¶ 10:08 p.m.
