Louisville Medicine Volume 62, Issue 7 | Page 11

leading to a higher incidence of substance abuse, illness, violence and the greater firearms availability in the United States. Chapter 1 authored by Robert J. Esterhay, MD, and H.J Bohn, Jr, MBA, is an exhaustive introduction to Population Health and its several components and stresses the importance of a “more efficient, effective, integrated and well-coordinated population ecosystem.” Chapter 2’s authors Judah Thornewill, PhD, and Robert Esterhay expound on Network Leadership in our inter-connected world of people and organizations and very informative statistical analyses of U.S. and global trends in population health needs. In Chapter 3, Susan Olson Allen, PhD, and Raymond Austin, MD, discuss Population Health Impact Assessment (HIA), a methodology to evaluate new initiatives that can affect the health and wellbeing of the community. The example of our “Louisville Loop HIA” is presented and includes a comprehensive land-use plan that will eventually lead to a paved trail of more than 100 miles around the city of Louisville with positive environmental and health benefits. Ronald T. Crouch, MBA, crunches numbers about demographic trends globally, in the United States and local regions by race and ethnicity, and the characteristics of our burgeoning older population and their special health care needs. Chapter 5 is written by Robert William Prasaad Steiner, MD, MPH, PhD, and Barry Wainscott, MD, MPH, and deals with defining the differences between the traditional medical care model versus the nascent and evolving population health model. Social determinants of health and factors related to social gradients of health are discussed to devise health policy formulations. A very interesting case example of a 4 y