Abstract
The variation in health outcomes among communities results largely from different levels of financial and nonfinancial policy investments over time; these natural experiments should offer investment and policy guidance for a business model on population health. However, little such guidance exists. We examined the availability of data in a sample of Wisconsin counties for expenditures in selected categories of health care, public health, human services, income support, job development, and education. We found, as predicted by the National Committee on Vital and Health Statistics in 2002, that availability is often limited by the challenges of difficulty in locating useable data, a lack of resources among public agencies to upgrade information technology systems for making data more usable and accessible to the public, and a lack of enterprise-wide coordination and geographic detail in data collection efforts. These challenges must be overcome to provide policy-relevant information for optimal population health resource allocation.
Highlights
Because of the increasing attention on improving population health, policy makers in the public and private sectors are asking for better information to guide their investment decisions
The Institute of Medicine [1] has called on the federal government to issue an annual report on trends and disparities in social and environmental factors that affect health and to advance the use of system-based simulation models to explain the health consequences of the underlying determinants of health. These requests are consistent with calls for comparative effectiveness research to inform costeffective allocation of resources among the multiple determinants of health [2,3]
Much of the variation in health outcomes among communities may result from different levels of financial and nonfinancial policy investments over time; these natural experiments should offer investment guidance for a business model of population health [4]
Summary
Because of the increasing attention on improving population health, policy makers in the public and private sectors are asking for better information to guide their investment decisions. The Institute of Medicine [1] has called on the federal government to issue an annual report on trends and disparities in social and environmental factors that affect health and to advance the use of system-based simulation models to explain the health consequences of the underlying determinants of health. These requests are consistent with calls for comparative effectiveness research to inform costeffective allocation of resources among the multiple determinants of health [2,3]. One exception is the work of the Trust for America’s Health: it estimated that an investment of $10 per person per year in proven community-based programs to increase physical activity, improve nutrition, and prevent smoking and other tobacco use could save more than $16 billion annually within 5 years [6]
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