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Introduction¹

On March 21, 2019, the Roundtable on Population Health Improvement of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (the National Academies) convened a 1-day workshop to explore the broad and multi-disciplinary nature of the population health workforce. The workshop was held at the Keck Center of the National Academies in Washington, DC, and organized by a planning committee made up of members of the Roundtable on Population Health Improvement and population health experts (see Appendix B for the workshop agenda).

WORKSHOP OBJECTIVES

The main objectives of the workshop were to explore the following three topics that resulted from the Statement of Task for the workshop (see Box 1-1):

1. Facilitating a population health orientation/perspective among public health and health care leaders and professionals;

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¹ This workshop was organized by an independent planning committee whose role was limited to identification of topics and speakers. This Proceedings of a Workshop was prepared by the rapporteurs as a factual summary of the presentations and discussions that took place at the workshop. Statements, recommendations, and opinions expressed are those of individual presenters and participants and are not necessarily endorsed or verified by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine; the Health and Medicine Division; or the roundtable, and they should not be construed as reflecting any group consensus.

2. Framing the work of personnel such as community health workers (CHWs), health navigators, and peer-to-peer chronic disease management educators within the context of population health; and
3. Leveraging the competencies of public- and private-sector workforces, such as education, transportation, and planning, that are working to include a “health in all policies,” community livability, or well-being orientation in their activities.

CONTEXT

Sanne Magnan from the University of Minnesota opened the workshop by providing background on the Roundtable for Population Health Improvement, the need for the workshop, and the workshop’s goals.

She explained that since February 2013, the Roundtable on Population Health Improvement² has provided a trusted venue for leaders from the public and private sectors to meet and discuss leverage points and opportunities arising from changes in the social and political environment for achieving better population health. She added that the roundtable’s vision is of a strong, healthy, and productive society that cultivates human capital and equal opportunity. This vision rests on the recognition that out-

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² More information about the Roundtable on Population Health Improvement is available at http://nationalacademies.org/HMD/Activities/PublicHealth/PopulationHealthImprovementRT.aspx (accessed May 10, 2021).

comes such as improved life expectancy, quality of life, and health for all are shaped by interdependent social, economic, environmental, genetic, behavioral, and health care factors and will require robust national and community-based policies and dependable resources to achieve.

The National Academies have produced reports on workforce topics relevant to improving population health, including Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth Through Age 8: A Unifying Foundation (IOM and NRC, 2015) and Communities in Action: Pathways to Health Equity (NASEM, 2017). Magnan explained that rather than focusing on workforce development, the workshop explored broad strategies for helping many kinds of current and future workers understand how they can directly or indirectly contribute to population health and well-being.

Magnan referred to the spectrum of opportunities and strategies for introducing, communicating, sharing, and teaching population health knowledge—ranging from basic, practical concepts to specialized graduate school curricula—that are already available to a wide range of practitioners, students, and audiences (see Figure 1-1). The workshop sought to address three broad categories of the workforce for population health: (1) the traditional health sector workforce in public health and health care settings; (2) the community workforce, such as community health navigators and CHWs; and (3) the workforce in other sectors, such as education, planning, and business. Magnan pointed out that some of these workers may consider themselves population health workers, while others may not.

Magnan noted that the National Academies were conducting two consensus studies that include the discussion of workforce dimensions: Integrating Social Care into the Delivery of Health Care: Moving Upstream to Improve the Nation’s Health (NASEM, 2019a) and Vibrant and Healthy Kids: Aligning Science, Practice, and Policy to Advance Health Equity (NASEM, 2019b). Magnan concluded by stating that the work of the roundtable “magnifies and reinforces that the workforce for population health presents in many formal and informal ways” and that the workshop objectives emphasize the broad thinking needed for the future workforce.

ORGANIZATION OF THE WORKSHOP AND PROCEEDINGS

This proceedings summarizes the presentations and discussions that took place during the public workshop. The first presentation was a keynote address focused on lessons from a multi-stakeholder statewide initiative for building a health workforce for the future. The keynote was followed by three panels, each addressing one of the workshop objectives. The panels included a mix of presentations, discussion, and question-and-answer sessions with members of the audience. A small group exercise in the latter part of the workshop provided an opportunity for workshop

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participants to consider how they could use population health workforce strategies to respond to the health-related problems of school absenteeism, lack of affordable housing, and food insecurity in communities. The workshop concluded with reflections from roundtable members and participants on key takeaways from the day’s presentations and discussions.

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