Leadership development as a strategy for transforming public health to reduce health inequities by addressing the social determinants of health

The CA/Hawaii Public Health Leadership Institute's mission is to provide a yearlong leadership development program each year to a cohort of selected participations from the public health system in each State. The Institute emphasizes increasing participants' leadership knowledge, skills, and commitment to leading and managing change, developing organizational capacity, creating strategies, and building partnerships that will contribute to eliminating health inequities and promoting healthy communities in health environments. The first cohort of participants began in January 2009 and graduated as of December, 2009. Of the thirty eight participants, eight came from the California State Department of Public Health, 20 came from local health departments, and Hawaii sent a team of 10 that represented both the state health department and non-profit organizations actively partnering with the department around health equity. The model of leadership development is unique in a number of ways. First, while personal leadership is developed, it is in the context of individuals leading teams in order to affect organizational change. The Institute holds itself accountable to the degree to which organizations are able to change their practices to focus on addressing social determinants of health. Second, the Institute focuses leadership and organizational change specifically to address health inequities. The theme throughout the Institute is building awareness around the degree to which health is affected by social determinants and developing specific action steps and organizational strategies to address those determinants. A number of innovative learning strategies are used including traditional strategies such as in person retreats with expert trainers and presenters, virtual strategies such as social networking and webinars, action learning projects paired with coaching, and peer education and exchange. Evaluation findings will be shared that demonstrate the effectiveness of this model as well as plans for on-going development in year 2.