Integrating Public Health and Health Care: Getting Beyond the Theory

Changes in population-based payment models in health care delivery have spurred enhanced efforts toward closer integration between state purchasers of health care and state, county, and local public health officials. This issue brief investigates approaches that state agencies might employ in order to better integrate public health and health care delivery as a means of improving health and the value of health care, and it is organized according to seven features of integration. The issue brief is accompanied by three case studies providing additional detail to some of the examples cited in the brief.