The Department of Population Medicine is located in the Kenmore Health Center building of Harvard Vanguard Medical Associates near Fenway Park.

The Department leads in the creation and dissemination of new knowledge and skills essential to maximizing the health of defined populations within available resources. Our core mission is to improve the health of individuals through research and teaching focused on patient populations and the health systems affecting their care.

The Department of Population Medicine does the research that helps provide information to people at all levels of our health care system, from government health officials to private citizens faced with day-to-day choices about how to maintain their own health. We inform policy makers who make decisions about insurance coverage, and individual clinicians and patients who need reliable evidence about what treatments and medications work best for specific conditions. Here at DPM we work to create a base of knowledge that will enrich both health care systems and the quality of medical education.

Areas of Focus include:

• Promoting health through prevention
• Improving the quality and cost effectiveness of medical care
• Understanding and overcoming disparities in care
• Using information technology to improve and protect health
• Using evidence to build sound health policy
• Creating national and global partnerships for health research
• Training the next generation of clinical, research, and health system leaders

Our affiliation with Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, a large health plan with diverse enrollees across New England, and Harvard Medical School gives us a prime opportunity to study specific patient populations and integrate our findings into the health care setting and educational curriculum. DPM's faculty are involved in studies that examine and enhance the operation of health care settings to ensure that clinicians have access to the most up-to-date systems and data in their day-to-day practices. They study issues like medication safety and effectiveness, obesity prevention, nutrition, maternal and child health, vaccination policy, health care disparities, uses of electronic medical record technology, and cancer screening and prevention. In addition, DPM sponsors teaching programs for medical students and residents that provide training experiences in the types of settings where they will eventually practice. Our teaching programs instill both clinical skills and a sound knowledge of public and population health issues, including innovations in science and medicine, health care insurance systems, and disease prevention. We also have a thriving set of national partnerships for collaborative research and an international program that seeks to create better access to health care and medicine in developing countries.

Many DPM clinicians and most fellows practice at Harvard Vanguard Medical Associates (HVMA).

A few examples from recent Fellows' research include:

1. Maternal fish intake, mercury, and offspring cognition
2. Weight gain in pregnancy and risk of maternal hyperglycemia
3. Stress and weight gain in midlife
4. Body mass index and proximity to food establishments over 30 years in the Framingham Heart Study
5. Impact of a price increase on sales of sugary soft drinks
6. Computerized decision alert to reduce prescribing of heavily marketed medications
7. Physician dissatisfaction, isolation, work-life stress and quality of care
8. Cancer screening before and after switching to a high-deductible health plan.

Copyright © 2013 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College