What are the advantages of having a healthy population

A healthy population helps in building a productive workforce for the country. Even the non-productive age group needs to be healthy to reduce the burden of healthcare. Healthy children would grow into healthy adults and would be able to contribute better in the economy. Healthy elders would mean less strain on the resources.

Ill health worsens an individual’s economic prospects throughout the lifecycle. For young infants and children, ill health affects their capacity to acumulate human capital; for adults, ill health lowers quality of life and labour market outcomes, and disadvantage compounds over the course of a lifetime. And, yet, with all the robust evidence available that good health is beneficial to economies and societies, it is striking to see how health systems across the globe struggled to maximise the health of populations even before the COVID-19 pandemic – a crisis that has further exposed the stresses and weaknesses of our health systems. These must be addressed to make populations healthier and more resilient to future shocks. Each one of us, at least once in our lives, is likely to have been frustrated with care that was inflexible, impersonal and bureaucratic. At the system level, these individual experiences add up to poor safety, poor care coordination and inefficiencies – costing millions of lives and enormous expense to societies. Many of the conditions that can make change possible are in place. For example, ample evidence exists that investing in public health and primary prevention delivers significant health and economic dividends. Likewise, digital technology has made many services and products across different sectors safe, fast and seamless. There is no reason why, with the right policies, this should not happen in health systems as well. Think, for example, of the...

Background A population-based approach to healthcare goes beyond the traditional biomedical model and addresses the importance of cross-sectoral collaboration in promoting health of communities. By establishing partnerships across primary care (PC) and public health (PH) sectors in particular, healthcare organizations can address local health needs of populations and improve health outcomes. The purpose of this study was to map a series of interventions from the empirical literature that facilitate PC-PH collaboration and develop a resource for healthcare organizations to self-evaluate their clinical practices and identify opportunities for collaboration with PH. Methods A scoping review was designed and studies from relevant peer-reviewed literature and reports between 1990 and 2017 were included if they met the following criteria: empirical study methodology (quantitative, qualitative, or mixed methods), based in US, Canada, Western Europe, Australia or New Zealand, describing an intervention involving PC-PH collaboration, and reporting on structures, processes, outcomes or markers of a PC-PH collaboration intervention. Results Out of 2962 reviewed articles, 45 studies with interventions leading to collaboration were classified into the following four synergy groups developed by Lasker’s Committee on Medicine and Public Health: Coordinating healthcare services ( n = 13); Applying a population perspective to clinical practice ( n = 21); Identifying and addressin...

Healthy population is beneficial in many ways: (i) If a person is healthy then he can work for many hours without any fatigue. (ii) If the population of a country is healthy then by giving its more and more time in production it can increase the national income of that country. (iii) Healthy population has the ability to think more efficiently, positively and intellectually. Good and qualitative leaders for the nation can be selected by them who can run their country more efficiently. (iv) By raising national income of a country, the standard of living of the population can be reformed. (v) If the population is healthy then government need not to spend its income for their medicine rather it can be invested for some progress in economy. (vi) In the development or growth of an economy healthy population plays a vital role in every respect.

You’ve no doubt heard of the G20, or the “Group of 20,” the set of countries that meets to discuss international finance and economics. Before the holiday season, I went down under to Melbourne, Australia for the H20—H for health—an international health summit hosted by the World Medical Association. This event put the spotlight on health issues prior to the G20 Leaders’ Summit, which immediately followed the H20 and was held in Australia as well. Our message was a simple one: Health is the greatest social capital a nation can have. Without a healthy, productive citizenship, a country can’t be economically stable. Addressing the social determinants of health is crucial to building a strong economic foundation, and eliminating health disparities is something we physicians should continue to work toward. Here in the United States, the AMA is tackling health care disparities in a number of ways, including Good health systems are a marker of a fair and just society, and many countries’ health sectors are top employers as well. In our country, Every country in the world has concerns about the rising costs of health care. We know through partnerships and discussions like the ones we had at the H20 that the United States is not alone in its work to improve both the health of our patients and the health of our care systems. Curbing some of these costs starts with preventing type 2 diabetes and heart disease, two of the nation’s most troubling chronic diseases. We want to prevent t...

Health is an important component of population whichaffectstheprocess of development. A healthy population is an asset to the country. A healthy individual is much more efficient and productive than an unhealthy individual. He or she is able to realise his or her potential, and play an important role in social and national development.

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • Ageing societies: The benefits, and the costs, of living longer ... Ageing societies: The benefits, and the costs, of living longer Population ageing, defined as a process which increases the proportion of old people within the total population, is one of the main problems of this century. It affects or will affect both developed and developing countries. It appears on the agendas of meetings of all kinds, from the G8 conferences to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) summits. According to a report for a recent meeting of the International Social Security Association (ISSA) , this does not mean, however, that all the necessary action has been taken yet. The population of developed countries is ageing fast, and the developing world is only a few decades behind. The proportion of the population aged 65 and over is expected to triple in less developed countries over the next 40 years, rising from 5.8 to 15 per cent of the total population, while in the more developed countries this figure is expected to rise from 16 to 26 per cent (an increase of more than 60 per cent), the ISSA report says. Japan has the oldest population, with more than 22 per cent of its population aged 65 and over. This figure is 20 per cent in Italy and Germany; and in the Southern Cone of America, Uruguay has the oldest population with almost 14 per cent of its population aged over 64. This tendency will increase everywhere by the year 2050; in Japan, for example,...

As health care evolves, so, too, does the information available to physicians and trainees. This is evident in the rising prevalence of population health management, which focuses on health outcomes for a group of individuals rather than a single patient. With across the board health outcomes becoming a more significant metric in health care, the concept has taken on new importance. With that, what is expected of a physician has changed, said Paul George, MD, MPHE, assistant dean for medical education and associate professor of family medicine at the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University. “And now as a physician, to better health care systems, you are asked to be responsible for not only the patient in front of you, but also the population of patients,” Dr. George said. Population health in med ed Population health in med ed Having spent nearly three decades in academic medicine, David B. Nash, MD—the dean of Thomas Jefferson University’s college of population health—is aware of its shortfalls. That was never more apparent to him than when he looked at the curriculum his daughter encountered when she began her career as a medical student. It was, Dr. Nash said, “exactly the same” as his own more than three decades ago. Related Coverage “Not every university has a college of population health. I get it,” Dr. Nash said. “But America’s 147 allopathic medical schools need to retool the factory floor for the future, so changing med ed is part of that retooling. Histo...