All Together for Population Health - Co-designing a Definition and Core Principles for a Population Health Approach in Ireland

Background: Ireland’s healthcare policy Sláintecare puts population health at the centre of health planning and delivery in response to population health trends, health inequalities and the health system reform agenda for integrated care.

Despite this focus there is no nationally agreed population health approach to deliver on policy goals. To address this gap this project developed a co-designed and evidence-based definition and principles for a population health approach for Ireland.

The outputs of this project will guide implementation of specific strategies and mechanisms for improved integrated care, services and a population health approach through Ireland's Health Regions, aligned programmes, policies and structures.

 

Approach: A scoping review of international definitions and comparative analysis of population health principles was completed to set the context for a series of nine online workshops conducted from September to November 2025. Workshop participation was based on extensive stakeholder analysis and engagement. Participants included representatives from patient organisations, local and national government, community advocacy, public health bodies, academia and other cross-sectoral partners resulting in a co-design process to build understanding, recognition and ownership of an applied population health approach.

Evidence-synthesis, translation and rendering for use has been achieved through prioritisation of themes and the production of outputs which include process, technical and evaluative reports, academic papers and orientation for a population health approach toolkit to be developed as a next stage.

Robust governance provided the project with oversight assuring meaningful engagement and ownership of relatable, accessible and user-centred outputs.

Results: Findings: from the scoping review to identify examples, definitions and principles of population health approaches in use internationally will be presented, as will the results of stakeholder analysis, engagement and co-design workshops. These findings whilst set in a particular policy and system reform context will nonetheless constitute a substantive body of evidence relevant to the population health and integrated care agenda across the globe.

 

Implications: This project generated a working definition and guiding principles for an agreed population health approach in Ireland in line with integrated care policy. As such, this project supports a significant policy direction to implement integrated and population-based care which is relevant locally on practical terms, but is also of interest internationally given its methodology and content.

 

This paper speaks to several Integrated Care Pillars including 'population health and local context' (no 2), and 'people as partners in care' (No 3). The project has a system wide scope and is aimed at building local leadership, competence and new alliances (Pillars 4 & 6).

Findings: speak to the ICIC26 conference theme of 'Strengthened Workforce by Growing Capacity, Skills & Inclusivity' by generating a co-designed and applied population health approach definition and principles that can guide practitioners, administrators, communities and policy makers in population health action and support implementation of specific mechanisms such as population-based planning and management.