ABSTRACT
When the topic of population health is discussed, it is commonly understood that different stakeholders will have different defi nitions of “population.” For example, hospitals will focus on specifi c subsets of their patient population, insurance companies will focus on the lives they are covering, and Public Health practitioners will focus on the population of an entire community. Much more signifi cant than these differences in the defi nition of targeted populations, however, is the less-appreciated question of how a coalition is defi ning their approach to “health.” The latter defi nition will determine whether an endeavor is focused primarily on improving the healthcare of individuals in a population through clinical interventions or whether it is focused on improving a population’s overall health primarily through community-oriented strategies.
