MHA@GW Module 4 - Community and Public Health

Key Competencies:

Business Skills and Knowledge -

1. Solving problems and making decisions.

2. Planning and managing projects.

3. Strategic planning.

4. Quantitative analysis.

Professionalism - professional and community contribution.

Health Care Knowledge -

1. Health care issues and trends.

2. Population health and status assessment.

3. Health policy formulation, implementation and evaluation.

My Development:

• Over the course of this module, I took great appreciation of how population health, community health, and public health all play a significant role in health care overall.  When communities work together in improving the lives of their residents as I saw with the Live Well San Diego case study, everyone benefits and health outcomes are improved.  Acknowledging and improving the social determinants such as water, healthy food, and access to basic medical services contribute to optimizing community health.
• Some new capabilities that I developed from this module include understanding the requirements and fine points of a Community Health Needs Assessment and Community Health Implementation Plans similar to what I researched with Baylor Scott & White Health, one of the largest not-for-profit health-care organizations in Texas.  Other ideas I've learned to incorporate into my occupation in health-care similar to what I remember learning from Module 2 include the informatics of health-care and the incorporation of mobile health applications for smart-phones that may become beneficial to the patients we mean serve.
• One specialization that I am certainly considering is Advocacy.  Such an advocacy campaign takes collaboration, research, resources, and the confidence to reach out to various groups of people whether it involves convincing patients to take a more proactive approach in optimizing their health other than medications or influencing those that make health policy decisions that affect our daily lives.  Hence, there is the power of our votes especially now at a critical point in our democracy.
• Maintaining the sustainability of a large health-care organization will always continue to be a challenge.  As such, I will continue to learn, grow, adapt, motivate, and listen as a leader as those characteristics are not only what makes a good leader but are in fact some of the requirements of a great leader.  In addition, ACOs and bundle payment models as broad as they are I hope to continue to gain more insight into the specifics and what kind of data metrics they utilize.
• I received some clarity during the first few weeks of this module when trying to distinguish between population health, community health, and public health.  The three do tend to intertwine and it surely took time to get a full grasp on them similar as seeing three circles overlap with each other.
• Communication between myself, the surgeon I work for, and our accountant is one such concept that I am continuing to work on trying to improve efficiency within my medical team.  The incorporation of our smart-phones with the widespread availability of mobile apps can be one approach.  Sometimes I can run our small private practice surgery clinic without actually being there with just the following resources: a computer with internet access that has our EHR system, my smart-phone, an earpiece, and a pen and paper.
• Some of the challenges that I overcame during the course of the module are the application of Community Health Implementation Plans, developing a strong advocacy campaign such as use of Sunscreen, understanding and applying the four P's of marketing, and applying Behavioral economics.