Through commissioned research, Guiding Committee insights, stakeholder interviews, literature reviews, and subcontracted collaborative activities, AcademyHealth identified many challenges and barriers to linking the health care payment system to community-wide population health. Specifically, AcademyHealth supported activities to overcome barriers and identify the facilitators that enable community health-focused payment models to thrive.

Project Learnings

The project team identified four major foundational elements that influence how health care purchasers, plans, and providers consider supporting sustainable funding and financing activities and infrastructure that can bolster community-wide population health. These findings are illustrated in this infographic and supported by the collaborative research projects and related reports listed below.

P4PH Infographic Snapshot

Case Studies on the Role of the Health System in Addressing Social Determinants of Health
Dr. Jean McGuire and colleagues at Northeastern University conducted four case studies of cross-sector community-level population health improvement efforts focused on addressing social determinants of health.

Workshop on Multi-Sector Collaboration to Improve Population Health
AcademyHealth and the Network for Regional Healthcare Improvement (NRHI) hosted a two-day workshop that convened five multi-sector teams led by regional health improvement collaboratives (RHICs) along with content experts to discuss how innovative payment and financing models could incentivize both health care sector and their non-health care sector partners —e.g., transportation, housing, education - to improve community-wide population health. 

Medicaid Payment Strategies for Financing Upstream Prevention 
AcademyHealth is collaborating with Nemours Children’s Health System to provide technical support to three state Medicaid programs to identify and test approaches to financing upstream prevention and addressing social determinants of health.

Building Payment Models and Contracting Structures to Support Social Determinants of Health
AcademyHealth is supporting the Green and Healthy Homes Initiative to examine the use of innovative payment models and contracting arrangements to support non-clinical services that address social determinants of health.

Through the development of frameworks for risk-based payment models, Discern Health outlines two approaches for plans, provider and community-based organizations to align incentives to improve population health in this paper.