Population Health

Chapters 6 & 13: Which Population Health Core Function Do You Think Is the Most Crucial in Relationship to Today’s National Health Needs?

Population health core functions include assessment, policy development, and assurance. Of the three factors, policy development is the most crucial in relation to the national health needs today. The reason behind this conclusion comes from a number of variables including that health policies harbor the rules and regulations, legislation, and funding required to put the population health plan into action. Policy development is also vital to nurses and medical practitioner’s for they have the ability to influence the policy-making process in a manner that improves the medical profession (Allender et al., 2013).

Policy development acts as an educative platform to inform and empower people about the health issues that are probably in their immediate environments. It is this awareness that prepares the population both mentally and physically to mitigate cases of disease outbreaks. Policies mobilize the communities into cohesive partnerships that plan in advance to identify any potential environmental health hazards and the different strategies of tackling these threats. Policies are all inclusive from the local levels to the state and national levels ensuring that every possible outcome has been accounted for (Allender et al., 2013).

Health policy follows a proven strategy in that a prospective idea after formulation is usually adopted and implemented in the environment of application in order to evaluate whether or not the expected outcomes are as desired. Policies such as the Affordable Care Act ensure that every US citizen is entitled to health insurance coverage regardless of the income disparity, in addition to mandating employer contribution towards the insurance options available for their employees (Shaw et al., 2014).