Models of Population Health: Their Value for US Public Health Practice, Policy, and Research

This issue of the American Journal of Public Health contains 6 articles focusing on models of population health. These models are schematic representations of factors that affect the health of populations, measured primarily as the average level of health in the population, but increasingly also considering the distribution of health within populations. Taken together, these articles provide an introduction to current US, Canadian, and European debates over population health, the factors that influence population health, and the policy and programmatic implications of models of population health.