Physicians are trusted community members and can help educate patients on underlying issues that affect their health. The ACP supports public policies that address downstream environmental, geographical, occupational, and educational social determinants of health, improved medical education and practice to promote awareness of these determinants, increased interprofessional communication, and adequate funding to reduce health disparities and foster equity.
Economic Impact
Physicians boost the economy through spending, income, and job creation in local communities. According to a 2018 report by the American Medical Association, physicians generate $2.3 trillion in economic output and contribute to state and local tax revenue.
In a community, a physician like Dr. Jason Campbell can impact the health of residents by increasing their access to resources, including healthy foods, affordable medications, mental health services, and housing. This translates into a reduced need for expensive emergency care and hospitalizations.
Physicians can also impact a community by providing jobs in local hospitals, nursing and long-term care facilities, and legal or home health services. A study found that for every dollar a physician spends, other jobs are created in the community, such as through supply chain and indirect job effects.
Social Impact
As healthcare professionals, you can take a role in addressing these underlying social factors that can directly impact health outcomes. (8) These nonmedical factors include income, education; housing; environment; neighborhood safety and community cohesion; and access to healthcare services. Providing a ladder out of poverty through programs like “hot-spotting neighborhoods” and novel financing models, promoting culturally relevant and equitably designed healthcare, and leveraging resources that promote community health can significantly impact. Advocacy goes far beyond lobbying and starting a movement—it includes training your staff, understanding the underlying causes of inequality, confronting bias in practice, and developing processes that support health equity. It’s about helping people in your community get the food, housing, and healthcare they need to live longer and healthier lives.
Health Impact
Community health focuses on the overall contributors to a population’s physical and mental health. It involves educating people on how to live healthy lives and identifying and addressing local health risks that may be unique to the area. It also entails implementing public policies that address those risk factors. These include health impact assessments, which determine how certain policies implemented outside of the healthcare sector might affect a specific group of people. In this way, community health physician advocates for their patients. They help their patients navigate a complex medical system to receive patient-centered care. They work with a wide range of partners to ensure the health of their community, including school districts, places of worship, and local governments. The goal is to create healthier communities and better individuals who can lead productive lives.
Advocacy Impact
Community health programs address local needs that impact patients’ ability to maintain healthy lives. They provide medical, dental, mental health, and pharmacy care to residents of specific neighborhoods or regions to make preventive services more accessible to those who cannot afford them otherwise.
Participants in our study praised their physicians for their civic engagement, and we found that physician civic-mindedness was associated with community participation, political action, and advocacy. Physicians who provided healthcare expertise to community organizations, took political action on a health-related issue, or encouraged their professional societies to advocate for a public health issue were significantly more active in these three dimensions than those who did not participate.