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Leadership development to advance health equity: An equity-centered leadership framework

Rationale for an equity-centred leadership framework 

As is now widely known, the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated long-standing inequities, highlighting the need for leadership approaches that centre and advance health equity.

In response, the authors present an equity-centred leadership framework that was developed as a curriculum for a 3-year leadership program at the Clinical Scholars National Leadership Institute in the United States.

Recognizing the limitations of traditional health leadership development programs in preparing leaders to advance health equity action, the framework identifies core equity and leadership competencies that health leaders need to lead action for health equity.

The authors also recognize that many leadership programs are grounded in masculine and Eurocentric ways of leading, which offer narrow world views. They identify the need to move beyond these forms of leadership and perspectives that are unable to address entrenched systemic inequities like racism.  

Equity and leadership competencies

This framework identifies equity and leadership competencies across four levels: personal, interpersonal, organizational, and community and system.

Examples of competencies include:

• self-awareness and the ability to create spaces where everyone’s voice is heard,
• valuing of individual differences,
• leading in relationship with diverse people,
• sharing power,
• partnering with communities to address and transform structural inequities, and
• social justice.

Definitions and sample learning activities are shared for each competency.

As an example of the depth and scope of change the authors are calling for in health leadership development programs, and the ways that people in public health and health care lead, they describe the social justice competency as “Develop the knowledge, skills, and disposition needed to create environments that foster equitable participation and self-determination of all groups while seeking to address and acknowledge issues of oppression, privilege, and power” (p. 1750).

 

Use this resource to

• Facilitate discussion on the distinct leadership competencies required to advance health equity
• Develop and apply leadership for health equity competencies in public health practice
• Design, implement and evaluate a leadership for health equity development program

 

Alignment with NCCDH work

Understanding how best to lead for health equity aligns strongly with other NCCDH work. The need for public health to lead for health equity and identify the underlying competencies has emerged in all three NCCDH environmental scans, in 2010, 2014 and 2018.

The NCCDH has developed several resources on leadership, including:

What contributes to successful public health leadership for health equity: An appreciative inquiry  (2013)   

Public health leadership for action on health equity: A literature review (2018)

The NCCDH’s Organizational Capacity Initiative in 2019–2020 identified leadership for health equity as a core element of building organizational capacity for health equity.

Tags: Leadership & capacity building, Academic Institution, Document, Journal Article