RE: Shared Language for Shared Work in Population Health

Thank you to the authors of this work for bringing to light important bridges to facilitate the integration between primary care and population health. The authors identified the important distinction between population health and community health, where community health is the population health goals for specific communities defined by “common interests, problems, fate, or those who live in a common environment, and with whom several primary care clinicians interact over time.” As a medical student, terms such as these often become interchangeable, and it is important, especially moving forward, to be able to differentiate them. By creating clearer definitions for commonly used terms in health care, the training of new physicians will also become more efficient. In this way, newly trained clinicians and public health professionals will not need to relearn local vocabulary with each transition in training.

While reading this informative work, I became curious as to whether there are similar efforts to expand the universal lexicon globally? There are many implications and challenges of expanding health care and aid beyond borders, one of which being language barriers. Do you see the potential for similar universally accepted definitions for common health care terms globally, such as the WHO’s definition of “health?” It will be important for the field of global health to be able to incorporate and translate this publication’s findings to primary care in global settings to facilitate navigation of potential communication barriers.

Another great point by the authors is how collaboration of care delivery and public health-centered roles are designed to improve health of specific populations. Working in a free clinic, we strive to adopt the lenses of both primary care delivery and public health advocacy roles. The unique, underserved and underinsured population frequenting free clinics creates a new niche within community health. Navigating care for these communities requires careful collaboration between direct patient care and increasing access to important resources as the authors discussed in other community settings. It would be interesting to learn how community-oriented primary care may be geared specifically towards free clinics.