Emerging Health Care Leaders: Lessons From a Novel Leadership and Community-Building Program

Andrea Martani; Agne Ulyte; Dominik Menges; Emily Reeves; Milo A Puhan; Rolf Heusser

doi:10.3389/phrs.2024.1606794

Emerging Health Care Leaders: Lessons From a Novel Leadership and Community-Building Program

Public Health Rev. 2024 Apr 4:45:1606794. doi: 10.3389/phrs.2024.1606794. eCollection 2024.

Authors

Andrea Martani¹, Agne Ulyte², Dominik Menges³, Emily Reeves⁴, Milo A Puhan³, Rolf Heusser³

Affiliations

¹ Institute of Biomedical Ethics, University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland.
² RAND Europe, Cambridge, United Kingdom.
³ Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Prevention Institute, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland.
⁴ Swiss School of Public Health (SSPH+), Zürich, Switzerland.

Abstract

Background: Although there are guidelines and ideas on how to improve public health education, translating innovative approaches into actual training programs remains challenging. In this article, we provide an overview of some initiatives that tried to put this into action in different parts of the world, and present the Emerging Health Care Leader (EHCL), a novel training program developed in Switzerland.

Policy options and recommendations: Looking at the experience of the EHCL, we propose policymakers and other interested stakeholders who wish to help reform public health education to support these initiatives not only through funding, but by valuing them through the integration of early career healthcare leaders in projects where their developing expertise can be practically applied.

Conclusion: By openly sharing the experiences, strengths, weaknesses, and lessons learned with the EHCL program, we aim to foster a transparent debate on how novel training programs in public health can be organised.

Keywords: public health education; public health leadership; training program; transformative learning; transformative public health education.

Grants and funding

The initial development of the EHCL community was supported by a grant (grant number 407440_180201) of the Swiss National Science Foundation in the National Research Programme “Smarter Health Care” (NRP 74). The funder was not involved in the conceptualisation or writing manuscript.