
My population health journey began during my Pediatrics internship at the University of Chicago when my Department Chair refused to let me have a one month rotation in a university operated community health center as a PGY2 , stating it was “not a legitimate academic experience”. This triggered my move in 1970 to the South Bronx to create the Montefiore Social Medicine Residency and become the initial resident.
In that program we never discussed epidemiology or numerators/denominators per se but clearly came to understand from experience that the health of the community was as influenced by those who didn’t come to the center as those that did, practiced with first family health workers, and experienced what we would call today Health in All Policies….. job training, legal advocacy, school health. I may not have used the population health term until first reading the Evans Stoddart paper in the early 1990s (Evans RG, Stoddart GL. Producing Health, Consuming Health Care. Soc. Sci Med 31(12),1347-1363, 1990)…but I have always thought all my later population health health scholarship and advocacy was a return to the Bronx in a clearer and more mature way .
My 14 years in public and private management as well as lessons from being a Medicare ProPac Comissioner made me intensively aware of the role of finances and financial incentives and how dominant they were in health . I was also strongly influenced when the OEO health center grants funded less social determinant services they went away…as opposed to formulas such as for crop subsidies and mortgage interest deductions or Medicare GME resident training to hospitals that “just keep giving” every day.
Also the dominance of managed care and capitation thinking in medical care had a strong influence…the bundling of payments rather than simple fee for service such as like combining hospital and outpatient services into a DRG bundle or even Social HMOs bundling with home/Long term care.
So the leap in my first explicit pop health 1992 essay for Donna Shalala when she was UW Madison Chancellor in her quarterly Unconventional Wisdom faculty column was based on this…“imagine if a significant part of a health care organizations income was tied to the improvement of their patient’s health and functional status….such incentives would unleash the same capitalistic creativity toward HEALTH that currently exists for HEALTH SERVICES. Thus the subtitle of the 1997 sabbatical book to come Purchasing Population Health:Paying for Results.
- Kindig, D.A. The Health Care System Should Produce Health. On Wisconsin, September/October, l992, p.25. https://populationhealth123.files.wordpress.com/2020/05/office-depot-scan.pdf
- Kindig, D.A. Purchasing Population Health: Paying for Results. University of Michigan Press: Ann Arbor, MI, 1997. https://www.press.umich.edu/15670/purchasing_population_health
- Kindig, D. Purchasing Population Health: Paying for Results. Chinese Edition 2001. Hong Wang Translation, Milbank Memorial Fund/Chinese Health Economic Institute Publisher
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1308399/
- Kindig, D.AHSR Presidential Speech: Beyond Health Services Research. Health Services Research 34:1 (April 1999, Part II).pp 205-214. https://europepmc.org/backend/ptpmcrender.fcgi?accid=PMC1088995&blobtype=pdf
- Kindig, D., Wang, H., Remington, P. How Fast Can the Racial Gap in Life Expectancy between White and Blacks be Eliminated? (MedGenMed, September 23, 1999, Medscape, Inc.) www.medscape.com/Medscape/GeneralMedicine/journal/1999/v01/mgm0923.wang/mgm-923
- Kindig, D., Stoddart, G. What is Population Health? American Journal of Public Health 93(3): 380-383, 2003. https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/full/10.2105/AJPH.93.3.380
- Size T, Kindig D, MacKinney C. Population Health Improvement and Rural Hospital Balanced Scorecards. J Rural Health 22:93-96, 2006 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1748-0361.2006.00015.x
- Kindig, DA. A Pay-for-Population Health Performance System. JAMA 296:2611-2613, 2006. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/204338
- Kindig, DA. Understanding Population Health Terminology. Milbank Quarterly 2007 85 (1) 139-161. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2690307/
- Kindig DA, Asada, Y, Booske B.A Population Health Framework for Setting National and State Health Goals. JAMA 299 (17) 2081-2083, 2008. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18460667/
- Peppard PE, Kindig DA, Dranger E, Jovaag A, Remington PL. Ranking Community Health Status to Stimulate Discussion of Local Public Health Issues: The Wisconsin County Health Rankings. American Journal of Public Health 98(2): 209-212, 2008. Accessed 06/26/2008. http://www.ajph.org/cgi/reprint/98/2/209
- Kindig, D. Beyond the Triple Aim: Integrating the Non Medical Sectors. Health Affairs Blog May 19, 2008. https://www.healthaffairs.org/do/10.1377/hblog20080519.000393/full/
- Booske, BC, Rohan AM, Kindig DA, Remington PL. Grading the 50 states on health and health disparities. Preventing Chronic Disease 7(1), 2010 https://www.cdc.gov/pcd/issues/2010/jan/08_0235.htm
- Kindig, DA, Peppard PE, Booske BC. How healthy could a state be? Public Health Reports 125(2): 160-167, 2010. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2821842/
- Kindig, D and Mullahy, J. Comparative Effectiveness-Of What? Evaluating Strategies to Improve Population Health. JAMA. 2010;304(8):901-902. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20736476/
- Kindig DA, Booske BC, Siemering KQ, Henry BL, Remington PL. Observations and recommendations From the Mobilizing Action Toward Community Health (MATCH) Expert Meeting. Prev Chronic Dis 2010;7(6). http://www.cdc.gov/pcd/issues/2010/nov/10_0132.htm.
- Cheng ER, Kindig DA. Disparities in premature mortality between high- and low-income US counties. Prev Chronic Disease 2012 (9):110-120. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22440549/
- Casper, T. and Kindig, D. Are Community-Level Financial Data Adequate to Assess Population Health Investments? Prev Chronic Dis 2012;9:120066. DOI: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22877572/
- Bakken, E. and Kindig D. Is Hospital Community Benefit Charity Care? Wisconsin Medical Journal 111 (5): 215-219, 2012 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23189454/
- Kindig, D and Cheng, E. Even as Mortality Fell in Most US counties, Female Mortality Nevertheless Rose in 42.8 percent of Counties from 1992 to 2006. Health Affairs 2013 32 (3): 451-458 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23459723/
- Bakken, E and Kindig, D. Could Hospital Community Benefit Enhance Community Health Improvement? Wisc. Med J 2013: 113 (1): 9-10 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24712214/
- Isham GJ, Zimmerman DJ, Kindig DA, Hornseth GW. HealthPartners adopts community business model to deepen focus on nonclinical factors of health outcomes. Health Aff (Millwood). 2013 Aug;32(8):1446-52.
- Kindig, D., Isham, G. and Siemering, K. 2013 IOM Population Health Roundtable Perspective. The Business Role in Improving Health: Beyond Social Responsibility2103 http://www.iom.edu/Global/Perspectives/2013/TheBusinessRole.aspx
- Kindig, D. Improving Population Health: Ideas and Action. 2014 electronic blog collection (43 posts). https://uwphi.pophealth.wisc.edu/publications/other/blog-collection-final-2014-04-05.pdf
- Bakken, E and Kindig D. Can Data From Nonprofit Hospital Tax Returns Improve Community Health? In Cytron, Pettit, Kingsley. What Counts: Harnessing Data for Americas Communities. Copyright © 2014. Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco and Urban Institute.
- Asada, Y and Kindig D. Health Affairs blog September 17, 2014 Should We Be Done with Describing Health Disparities? http://healthaffairs.org/blog/2014/09/17/should-we-be-done-with-describing-health-disparities/
- Asada, Y., Whipp, A. Kindig D et al. Inequalities in multiple health outcomes by education, sex, and race in 93 US counties: Why we should measure them all. International Journal for Equity in Health 2014, 13:47 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24927805/
- Kindig, D and Isham, G. Population Health Improvement: A Community Health Business Model That Engages Partners in All Sectors. 2014 Frontiers in Health Services Management 30 (4): 3-20. This paper won the 2014 ACHE Dean Conley Article of the Year Award.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25671991/
- Bakken E, Kindig D. Does nonprofit hospital community benefit vary by state? J Public Health Manag Pract. 2015 Jan-Feb; 21(1):18-22.
- Kindig, D and Bakken, E. Health Affairs blog May 8, 2014 Is NonProfit Community Benefit Equally Distributed Across States?http://healthaffairs.org/blog/2014/05/08/is-non-profit-hospital-community-benefit-equally-distributed-across-states/
- Kindig D. From Health Determinant Benchmarks to Health Investment Benchmarks. Prev. Chronic Disease 2015 Prev Chronic Dis 2015;12:150010 https://www.cdc.gov/pcd/issues/2015/15_0010.htm
- Kindig, D. 2015. Can There Be Political Common Ground for Improving Population Health? Milbank Quarterly Volume 93, Issue 1 (pages 24–27) https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25752346/
- Kindig, D. 2015. Improving Our Children’s Health Is An Investment Priority. Milbank Quarterly Volume 93, Issue 2 Pages 255–258 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26044628/
- Kindig D. 2015. What Are We Talking About When We Talk About Population Health? Does Population Health Mean in 2015? Health Affairs blog April 6 2015 https://www.healthaffairs.org/do/10.1377/hblog20150406.046151/full/
- Rosenbaum, S., Kindig, D, Byrnes M et al. 2015. In 2011, the Estimated Size of the Nonprofit Hospital Tax Exemption Surpassed $24 Billion. Health Affairs 2015 34:7;1225-1233 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/278791305_The_Value_Of_The_Nonprofit_Hospital_Tax_Exemption_Was_246_Billion_In_2011
- Kindig D, Lardinois N, Chatterjee D. 2016 Can States Simultaneously Improve Health Outcomes and Reduce Health Outcome Disparities? Prev Chronic Dis 2016;13:16012 https://www.cdc.gov/pcd/issues/2016/16_0126.htm
- Kindig David. 2016 To Launch And Sustain Local Health Outcome Trusts, Focus On ‘Backbone’ Resources. Health Affairs Blog February 10, 2016 https://iaphs.org/improving-population-health-continuing-journey/
- Kindig, David. 2017. Population Health Equity: Rate and Burden, Race and Class. JAMA 2017; 317(5):467-468. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28097326/
- Kindig, David. Feb 3, 2017.Improving Population Health: Continuing the Journey. IAPHS Blog. https://iaphs.org/improving-population-health-continuing-journey/
- Kindig, David, Nobles,Jenna, Zidan, Moheb. 2018 “Meeting the Institute of Medicine’s 2030 US Life Expectancy Target”, American Journal of Public Health 108, no. 1 (January 1, 2018): pp. 87-92. DOI: 10.2105/AJPH.2017.304099 This paper was Editors Choice 2018 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5719677/
- Givens, M, Kindig, D, Tran, P, Faust, V. Power: The Most Fundamental Cause of Health Inequity? Health Affairs Blog February 1, 2018 10.1377/hblog20180129.731387
- Kindig D, Lardinois N, Asada Y Mullahy J. Considering Mean and Inequality Health Outcomes Together: the Population Health Performance Index. 2018 International Journal for Equity in Health (2018) 17:25 DOI 10.1186/s12939-018-0731-2 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5816551/
- Kindig, David. Population Health Performance Index Calculator. UW Population Health Institute. http://match.wisc.edu/phpi/index.php
- Kindig, D and Milstein, R. A Balanced Investment Portfolio For Equitable Health And Well-Being Is An Imperative, And Within Reach. Health Affairs April 2018 37:4 https://doi.org/10.1377/hlthaff.2017.1463
- Keith P. Gennuso, PhD, David A. Kindig, MD, PhD, and Marjory L. Givens, PhD, MSPH Join-point Trend Analysis of Infant Mortality Disparities in Wisconsin, 1999–2016 Am J Public Health. Published online ahead of print March 21, 2019: e1–e5. doi:10.2105/AJPH.2018. 304945) https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/abs/10.2105/AJPH.2018.304945
- Sanne J. Magnan, MD, PhD, and David A. Kindig, MD, PhD 2019 Purchasing Population Health – Revisited . POPULATION HEALTH MANAGEMENT Volume 22, Number 2, 2019 https://www.liebertpub.com/toc/pop/22/2
- Kindig, D and Magnan, S. 2019.Can Academic Population Health Departments Improve Population Health ? JAMA Network Open. 2019;2(4):e192205. doi: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2730467
- Kindig, D. 2019. Using Uncommon Data to Promote Political Common Ground in Reducing Infant Mortality. Milbank Quarterly ahead of print. 10 December 2019 https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-0009.12441
- Kindig, David. January 20, 2020. Did You Read Any if These Pop Health Policy Articles? IAPHS Blog https://iaphs.org/did-you-read-any-of-these-pop-health-policy-articles/