The health policy journal club is an interdisciplinary, inter-professional group convened monthly by the Farley Health Policy Center to discuss timely topics in health policy. A curated selection of high-yield articles provides the basis for discussion. Past topics have included income inequality and health, professionalism in medicine, patients as consumers, and adjusting payment for measures of social risk. This page presents the reading list from the most recent journal club.

Readings

Conceptual considerations in measuring whole health

1. Measurement, Learning, and Accountability for Whole Health. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2023. Achieving whole health: A new approach for veterans and the nation. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.  pg. 320-325. 
2. Tyler J. VanderWeele, Claudia Trudel-Fitzgerald, Paul V. Allin, et al. Current Recommendations on the Selection of Measures for Well-Being In: Measuring Well-Being. Edited by: Matthew T. Lee, Laura D. Kubzansky, and Tyler J. VanderWeele, Oxford University Press (2021). pgs. 501-514.
3. Carol D. Ryff, Jennifer Morozink Boylan, and Julie A. Kirsch, Advancing the Science of Well-Being In: Measuring Well-Being. Edited by: Matthew T. Lee, Laura D. Kubzansky, and Tyler J. VanderWeele, Oxford University Press (2021). pg 521-532.

Newer measure examples

1. Khurana D, Leung G, Sasaninia B, Tran D, Khan M. The Whole PERSON Health Score: A Patient-Focused Tool to Measure Nonmedical Determinants of Health. NEJM Catalyst. 2022;3(8). 

2. Rosenbaum R, Gordon AE, Cresta J, Shaughnessy AF, Jonas WB. Implementing Whole Person Primary Care. Annals of Family Medicine. 2023;21:188. 

Summary

These articles describe principles of measuring whole health, tensions in designing an instrument (such as standardization vs flexibility to individual context), and examples of existing instruments being applied to care delivery in primary care. Participants at the journal club shared a range of thoughts – from raising considerations around how such an assessment is culturally bound and culturally constrained, to concerns around medicalizing non-medical issues, to the idea that whole health and what matters to the patient is the most important context for a clinician to ascertain.