Developing the Next Generation of Rural Public Health Leaders

Objective: To evaluate the effectiveness of the National Rural Health Association's (NRHA) Rural Health Fellows Program in increasing leadership and advocacy capacity at individual and systems levels. NRHA recognized the need for increased public health leadership, as documented by the Institute of Medicine and public health literature, and developed a leadership program to create and build a community of leaders from various disciplines to work individually and collectively to transcend urban/rural borders, advocate for health care needs of rural communities, and develop growing levels of leadership and advocacy competence that will translate into action and results on rural health policy issues. The program facilitates emerging leaders' success in rural health and in governance of NRHA. This is accomplished through experiential and action learning, exposure to faculty and seasoned practitioners, and reinforcement through group coaching and structured team assignments over 12 months. Methods: Graduating fellows were surveyed after program completion to assess skill levels in 10 competency areas and the extent of coalition-building, networking, and advocacy engagement. In addition, fellows were surveyed about their future leadership plans for rural health at the national, state, and local level and with NRHA. Results: The fellows program improved skills of participants in all competency areas and the majority of fellows put their leadership training into action in the work place. Almost all fellows indicated plans to continue in or take on a leadership position in NRHA and most developed cross-disciplinary working relationships with other fellows. Conclusions: A leadership program combining one-on-one coaching, teamwork, and group projects is effective in improving the leadership capacity of rural public health practitioners, and bridging rural/urban and disciplinary borders. In addition, the program successfully engages emerging leaders in the governance of the organization itself, thus serving as a model for other large associations seeking ways to develop future leaders.