Best Practices for Teaching and Assessing Population Health and Wellness

We aimed to describe the concept of population health and wellness in the context of pharmacy education, curricular integration, and assessment.

The definition of population health and wellness, which differs from that of public health, emphasizes the importance of environmental, biological, and social factors in determining population health outcomes. Various population health measures, including objective (mortality rates and life expectancy) and subjective (self-rated health and quality of life) indicators, can be used to teach and assess population-based care. Curricular frameworks and approaches such as the Clinical Prevention and Population Health Curriculum Framework and the competency map approach can be used to integrate population health concepts into pharmacy education. Didactic and experiential learning opportunities, skill assessments (eg, immunizations, point-of-care testing, and research projects), and co-curricular activities (eg, health fairs and student-run clinics) can be used by educators to assess student's knowledge and skills related to population health.

Despite the significance of population health and wellness for pharmacists, there is a lack of established comprehensive curricular approaches to effectively teach these concepts in pharmacy education. Skill assessments have standardized rubrics and should be used by all pharmacy educators. Other activities and assessments exist to evaluate students in research projects, service-learning opportunities, health fairs, and student-run clinics. There is a need for greater collaboration across pharmacy programs and health profession education initiatives to publish more examples and assessment tools to ensure that all graduates attain the necessary population health competencies.