Growing Your Own - Public Health Workforce Leadership Development

To drive improved health outcomes, the public health system needs a competent and driven workforce. The challenge is to create a culture of leadership at all levels, with staff who are engaged, empowered and encouraged to lead public health into the future.The ‘Growing Your Own’ leadership development programmes, cultivated by Health Education North West’s public health workforce team, aimed to develop and grow leaders at all levels across the public health workforce. It comprised three programmes focused on the development of:aspiring directorspractitionersadvanced practitionersAspiring Directors of Public HealthThis case study focuses on the design, development, implementation and evaluation of a bespoke leadership programme for a cohort of consultants in the North of England, who aspired to be directors within public health.The aim of this programme was to develop senior leaders from within the system at a time of transition and significant organisational transformation. This programme for leadership development was a response to workforce planning intelligence, identifying the number of vacant Director of Public Health posts in the public health system, and recognition locally of the need to progress a model for succession planning.Public Health PractitionersThis case study, which is part of series of three, focuses on a leadership development programme that was delivered to public health practitioners at Agenda for Change pay bands 5-7. This programme ran from November 2012 until March 2013, with a total of 162 public health practitioners completing the course from the North East (NE), North West (NW) and Yorkshire and Humber (Y&H).It was delivered during the transition of public health into local authority leadership, with the programme’s main purpose being to develop leaders from within the system, and to assist transition by investing in the workforce at a time of uncertainty and organisational change.Public Health Advanced PractitionersThis case study focuses on a leadership programme developed to inspire leadership in the advanced practitioner workforce in order to support the implementation of the new public health system. The programme was designed for a cohort of 80 advanced practitioners from across the North West public health system and ran from April to July 2013.