An Integrated Framework for Risk Management and Population Health

ABSTRACT

The traditional medical model of health and health policy development has focused on individuals and the role of medical care in preventing and treating disease and injury. Recent attention to health inequities and social determinants of health has raised the profile of population heath and evidence-based strategies for improving the health of whole populations. At the same time, risk science has emerged as an important new discipline for the assessment and management of risks to health. This article reviews historical developments in the fields of risk management and population health and proposes a joint population health risk management framework that integrates the key elements of both fields. Applying this integrated approach to managing population health risks will facilitate the development of evidence-based health policy. It will encourage a more systematic and comprehensive evaluation of population health issues and promote the use of a broader suite of interventions to reduce health risks and enhance population health status.

Key Words:

• risk assessment
• risk management
• population health
• public health
• health determinants
• health interventions
• health policy

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The integrated framework for risk management and population health was developed within the R. Samuel McLaughlin Centre for Population Health Risk Assessment in the Institute of Population Health at the University of Ottawa. The authors thank Peter Walker, Yvonne Lefebvre, and Denise Alcock for their many helpful comments as the integrated framework was developed. We are also grateful to the three anonymous referees for their comments on the original version of the manuscript. Daniel Krewski is the NSERC/SSHRC/McLaughlin Chair in Population Health Risk Assessment at the University of Ottawa.

Notes

¹Editor's note: An interesting set of retrospective essays written by members of the NRC framework committee can be found in Hum Ecol Risk Assess 9(5):1093–391, published in 2003.