Tomorrow I am heading to Washington D.C. to attend the 2017 Practical Playbook National Meeting. The theme of the conference is “Improving Population Health: Collaborative Strategies That Work.” This meeting is one place where leaders from public health, community, and provider organizations come together to explore opportunities for improving collaboration in order to address the social determinants of health. I’m particularly interested in a number of presentations that focus on the use of big data, advanced analytics and technology to improve population health. There is no doubt that health IT will play a larger role as we move forward with these efforts.
For those of us who work for and with provider organizations, it is important that we recognize that we’re not going to significantly impact the upstream causes of poor health without venturing out into the community. The bulk of this work has to take place beyond the hospital’s walls. Collaborating with public health and community organizations to address challenges such as food deserts, substandard housing, and unsafe neighborhoods just makes sense. But collaborating is not always easy. That’s where the Practical Playbook National Meeting comes into play. The vision for the 2017 National Meeting is to:
- Provide a lively forum for public health, primary care, and community partners to share their knowledge, best practices, and winning strategies for tackling population health issues. Participants will learn methods and strategies to collaborate with each other in potent ways they can put to immediate use.
- Build practical tools and clarify concrete steps for taking action that not only address the challenges of moving forward in uncertain times, but leverage on-going change.
- Advance the application of the Practical Playbook at state, and community levels. Professionals working in the field will be equipped to align and engage effectively no matter what direction emerging health policy takes.
- Improve the efficacy of interventions by building capacity and capabilities for more effective cross-sector collaboration.
- Inspire, energize, and encourage the dedicated professionals working to improve population health. This meeting will empower public health, primary care, and community health professionals with content that shows them what can be accomplished, tools that improve their effectiveness, and connections that encourage collaboration.
Participant learning objectives include:
- Define specific, workable steps that communities, health systems and public health organizations can align around to tangibly improve population health.
- Identify, gather, and share information/data designed to propel focused, data-driven efforts at the community health level.
- Clarify the contours of the current healthcare landscape as it affects population health, acknowledging what has changed, what has not, and the opportunities change offers.
- Understand how different community and health sectors can inform, integrate, and collaborate on evolving concepts and ways of thinking to foster dynamic cross-sector partnerships in a fast-moving world.
- Break through the professional silos separating public health, primary care providers, health systems, and community leadership organizations to accelerate sharing of best practices and policies.
I’ll be Tweeting and writing blog posts throughout the conference. If you’re not attending in person, please feel free to follow along on Twitter. The conference hashtag is #PPBMeeting.
The Healthcare Marketer 
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