Road map for leadership and management in public health: a case study on noncommunicable diseases program managers’ training in Rwanda

ABSTRACT

Ministries of Health (MoHs) and health organizations are compelled to work across sectors and build coalitions, strengthening health systems to abate the rise of noncommunicable diseases (NCDs). A critical element of NCD prevention and control involves significant and difficult changes in attitudes, policies and protective behavior at the population level. The population-level impact of NCD interventions depends on the strength of the health system that delivers them. In particular, low-resource settings are exploring efficiencies and linkages to existing systems or partnerships in ways that may alleviate redundancies and high delivery costs. These entail complex operational challenges, and can only be spearheaded by a competent and passionate workforce. There is a critical need to develop and strengthen the management and leadership skills of public health professionals so that they can take on the unique challenges of NCD prevention and control. An added component must include a shift from the traditional clinical approach to a community-based effort, focusing heavily on health education and community norm change. Strengthening the workforce capacity of program managers at MoHs and other implementing institutions is key to capturing, analyzing, advocating and communicating information and will, in turn, reinforce the scale-up of interventions fostering a robust health system. This paper summarizes the best practices and lessons learned from the NCD Program Managers short course conducted by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in December, 2016 in Rwanda.

KEYWORDS:

• Noncommunicable diseases
• program managers
• training
• Rwanda
• leadership
• NCD workforce capacity

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the training participants for their enthusiastic partaking and constructive feedbacks; colleagues in the Rwanda Biomedical Center (RBC) for their contributions in the planning and implementation of the training and in following-up with post-training planned activities; Shelly Bratton and Ifeyinwa Udo in the CDC’s Workforce Integration Development Branch and Denise Duran in the Division of Cancer Prevention and Control for their support and feedbacks in the planning, preparation and development of training curriculum.

Disclaimer

The findings and conclusions in this report are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official position of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.