Introduction Population health involves integration of health, education, and social services to keep a defined population healthy, to address health challenges holistically, and to assist with the realities of being mortal. The fragmentation of the US population health delivery system is addressed. The impacts of this fragmentation on the treatment of substance abuse in the United States are considered. Innovations needed to overcome this fragmentation are proposed. Approach Treatment capacity issues, including scheduling practices, are discussed. Costs of treatment and lack of treatment are considered. Models of integrated care delivery are reviewed. Potential innovations from systems science, behavioral economics, and social networks are considered. The implications of these innovations are discussed in terms of information technology (IT) systems and governance. Conclusions Enormous savings are possible with more integrated treatment. Based on a range of empirical findings, it is argued that investments of these resources in integrated delivery of care have the potential to dramatically improve health outcomes, thereby significantly reducing the costs of population health.

Introduction The overall enterprise of health care delivery is considered. The 4 levels of the

While the use of evidence-based interventions (EBIs) has been advocated by the medical research community for quite some time, uptake of these interventions by healthcare providers has been slow. One possible explanation is that it is challenging for providers to estimate impacts of a specific EBI on their particular organization. To address that concern, we developed and evaluated a type of simulation called a policy flight simulator to determine if it could improve the adoption decision about a specific EBI, the transitional care model (TCM). The TCM uses an advanced practice nurse-led model of care to transition older adults with multiple chronic conditions from a hospitalization to home. An evaluation by a National Advisory Committee, made up of senior representatives from various stakeholders in the U.S. healthcare system, found the policy flight simulator to be a useful tool that has the potential to better inform adoption decisions. This paper describes the simulation development effort and documents lessons learned that may be useful to the healthcare modeling community and those interested in using simulation to support decisions based on EBIs.

Digital engineering (DE) is “an integrated digital approach that uses authoritative sources of systems’ data and models as a continuum across disciplines to support lifecycle activities from concept through disposal. A DE ecosystem is an interconnected infrastructure, environment, and methodology that enables the exchange of digital artifacts from an authoritative source of truth.” (DAU, 2017) Digital transformation is fundamentally changing the way acquisition and engineering are performed across a wide range of government agencies, industries, and academia and is characterized by the integration of digital technology into all areas of a business, changing fundamental operations and how results are delivered in terms of new value to customers. It includes cultural change centered on alignment across leadership, strategy, customers, operations, and workforce evolution. In 2020, the Systems Engineering Research Center (SERC) developed a Digital Engineering Competency Framework (DECF) to support the US Department of Defense (DoD). This paper provides an update to the DECF (version. 1.1) and a mapping of some existing DoD training resources against the DECF. It discusses gaps and provides a few high‐level recommendations on how to build DE competency in the DoD acquisition workforce. Though the DECF and the training included here are specific to the DoD, the competency framework is intended to be relevant to anyone working in the DE space.

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