Population Health
In Sickness and In Health
Why are some countries, cultures and people more healthy than others? What makes some communities or individuals live longer than their neighbours? The answers to these questions are beginning to be unravelled by research into population health. John Lynch, a population health scientist, focuses on what makes some groups healthier than others. “A doctor’s clinical job is to find out what made a particular person get sick at a particular time, and what can be done to help them get better,” he explains. “An epidemiologist’s job is to understand why some populations are sicker than others and what can be done to make that population healthier. So the epidemiologist starts with describing the distribution of ill health in a population – that could be a country, a state, a city or even a social group such as Indigenous children.”
And population health is not just about average differences in health between countries, says John. “Within countries there are large inequalities in health between some ethnic and socioeconomic groups. In Australia, for example, there are enormous differences in health between the Indigenous and white populations. Statistics show that Aboriginal infants born now can expect to live much shorter, less healthy lives, with higher rates of infant mortality,
cardiovascular disease and diabetes. The difference between Indigenous and white life expectancy within Australia is larger than between Indonesia and Sweden. For a population health scientist it’s a disgrace when some groups in a rich society like Australia do not share the health benefits enjoyed by others. There is so much we can do to reduce these inequalities in health and efforts need to start early in life.”
The ultimate goal of population health science is, according to Professor Lynch, to understand what causes poor health and what can be done to improve the social conditions, health behaviours and lack of medical care that help cause poorer health. That means analysing data using statistical techniques, as well as using qualitative research to better understand the social context of people’s lives. John believes that we then need to “collaborate with policy makers and service providers to enhance programs and develop innovative interventions that can improve population health”. And that means advancing prevention science. “It’s really important that we try to prevent poor health in populations, as well as treating people who do get sick,” he insists.
Discovering the different factors that are influencing the health of a particular group can require very specific information, as John found out in one of his early projects. “I started out in population health, trying to convince workers at a petro-chemical plant to stop smoking but they gently reminded me that they were exposed to some toxic chemicals, so relatively speaking they did not see that smoking was their biggest health problem! That’s when the light bulb went on for me, and I realised that maybe the best way to improve their health was to understand the broader things that influenced their health behaviours – the nature of their work and their lives – and that meant training in epidemiology and public health.”
Population health is delivering real change to the health of Australians right now and it’s for this reason that John feels “it’s an exciting time to be part of population health research in Australia”.
He explains the excellence that has been developed locally in this field. “In every state and territory we have well trained, talented population health scientists who are endeavouring to understand the causes of ill health in populations and apply that knowledge to all sorts of interventions to improve population health. In South Australia we are building ‘platforms’ to enhance and sustain population health research. These platforms include population-wide data linkage capacity that will combine administratively collected data from the health, education, housing, welfare and social service sectors. We have innovative interventions being conducted in early childhood health and development, on obesity prevention and a climate of co-operation with the State government to enhance the translation of research into policies and programs. These are the building blocks of population health research and Australia can be one of five or six places in the world with this capacity for integrated population health platforms. I think Australia is extremely well placed to be an international leader in population health research and while we will certainly collaborate and learn from our partners in other countries, Australia will be a major player in this research over the coming decades.”