Have leaders made a difference?: How leadership can show the way towards MDGs
Venue: TBC
Day and time:Thursday, 27 January 2011 - 14:00-15:00
As the deadline for the Millennium Development Goals approaches, dynamic and effective leadership will be vital for countries to meet the health-related targets. This session delves into the leadership-related issues often confronted when managing complex and delicate environments, such as: competing priorities, contradictory purposes and the involvement of various stakeholders.
Dynamic and effective leadership can make a dramatic impact in healthcare delivery. Without it, countries can fail to meet targets and progress towards the health-related Millennium Development Goals is hampered.
As one of the key six action fields of the Human Resources for Health Action Framework, leadership plays a role at a variety of levels in HRH.
Each key issue related to the health workforce (education, training and skill mix; management; migration and retention; financing; and partnerships) needs an element of clear leadership within itself. Meanwhile, for progress to happen, leadership is also required to deal with all six individual issues as integrated parts of a whole.
For example, leadership is needed to overhaul the health management system, to design innovative retention measures and to mobilize finances to scale up the training of health workers. Political leaders, and in particular, ministers of health will need to be rallied and mobilised to take the health workforce agenda forward.
This plenary session will delve into the challenges related to leadership, and the role of leaders as countries and the global community struggle to reach the MDGs.
It will strive towards an open discussion and understanding of what it takes to lead in a complex environment where competing priorities, contradictory purposes, and many stakeholders operate.
At the end, panellists and the audience will have derived lessons and actionable ideas on how to exercise leadership to move the HRH agenda towards reaching the MDGs.