Developing and evaluating a national network among new local health officials

Social relationships and related networks among public health leaders at the local level are critical to the leaders' success as top executives of local health departments. Cultivating these relationships is particularly important during the early stages of the new Local Health Officials' (LHOs) tenure. The Survive and Thrive program was developed to prepare new LHOs (in their position 2 years or less) with the necessary knowledge and skills to succeed within the multi-faceted environment of local Public Health practice. One of the major goals of this national program is to foster relationship-building among the new LHOs who participate and to encourage “esprit de corps” through peer-learning and peer-coaching. To assess program effectiveness with regard to these objectives, LHOs were surveyed regarding their sense of connectedness with the other LHOs in the cohort and the extent to which they perceived their fellow trainees as sources of knowledge, advice, and support. Surveys were administered to program participants following each of three face-to-face workshops. Social Network Analyses were conducted using UCINET whereby network densities were examined. The results strongly suggested that the LHOs did indeed build a social network over the course of the training and became more cohesive, developing strong relationships with one another. This presentation focuses on the findings from these analyses including the major programmatic components facilitating social networking among new LHOs nationwide. Implications of these findings will be discussed with respect to developing and evaluating social networks in workforce development and leadership training initiatives for public health leaders.