Leadership learning and development for global health: A case study of capacity building in southern Africa

Case, Peter; Chikodzore, Rudo; Chitapi, Precious; Marr Chung, Amanda; Gosling, Jonathan; Gosling, Roly; Joyce, Katie; Mataure, Priscilla; Viljoen, Greyling

Abstract

For the past eight years, Bristol Leadership & Change Centre (BLCC), UWE, has been collaborating closely with the Malaria Elimination Initiative (MEI) to improve the management and leadership of healthcare programmes in Vietnam, Zimbabwe, Eswatini and Namibia. Most recently, UWE has been working with MEI (a research centre based at the University of San Francisco, California) and the Ministry of Health and Child Care (MoHCC) on a Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation project aimed at providing better integrated and more sustainable HIV prevention services in Zimbabwe. An integral part of our work in malaria and HIV prevention spaces, has been training programme staff in the use of participatory action research and learning methods, typically with a focus on identifying and addressing operational challenges. The challenges that inhibit health service delivery can often be addressed by improving communication and coordination, clarifying lines of resourcing and accountability, maintaining motivation, providing adequate training and supervision, and removing bureaucratic silos. The training programmes, which sit alongside our health system change interventions (Agnis et al., 2022; Chung et al., 2020, Chung et al., forthcoming), are accredited via a Postgraduate Certificate in Professional Practice in Change Leadership (PPCL) awarded by the University of the West of England. The PPCL module has been delivered successfully in Zimbabwe (2017-18) and Namibia (2019-20) for cohorts of malaria control programme health professionals and, since 2020, UWE has been collaborating with the Women’s University of Africa on a third run of the module for twenty professionals working for the MoHCC in Zimbabwe. This case study provides an overview of the authors’ experience of designing, delivering and refining the PPCL module as well as highlighting how graduates have employed their learning to bring about impactful health service outcomes.

• Presentation Conference Type: Conference Paper (unpublished)
• Conference Name: 12th Developing Leadership Capacity Conference
• Start Date: Jul 12, 2022
• End Date: Jul 13, 2022
• Deposit Date: Aug 23, 2022
• Publicly Available Date: Aug 23, 2022
• Keywords: Leadership, leadership development, global health, higher education, Zimbabwe, Africa
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/9903065
• Related Public URLs: https://blogs.uwe.ac.uk/leadership-and-change/developing-leadership-capacity-conference-2022/; ; https://www.uwe.ac.uk/research/centres-and-groups/leadership-and-change