Building and Sustaining Leadership in the US Public Health System

PHLS Annual ProgramSunday, Nov. 3, 2007

Consumer/Benefactor PanelRex Archer, MD, MPH

Director of HealthKansas City, Missouri

“Leaders are visionaries with a poorly developed sense of fear and no concept of the odds against them”

-Robert Jarvik

Leadership Competencies

1. Envision a better future

2. Accurately assess present reality

3. Not just tolerating, but actually drawing energy from the difference in order to drive change (without compromising the long term vision or denying present reality)

Envision a better future: Vision?

Where there is no vision, people perish.

-Proverbs 29: 18

A Health System: Health Protection for Life!

Public Health Network

Health Protection: Health Promotion, Prevention, and Preparedness

Healthcare Delivery System

Disease Care

Medical care and tertiary prevention

Safety net programs and secondary prevention

Primary preventionAddressing thesocial determinants of health

Camara Phyllis Jones, MD, MPH, PhDResearch Director on Social Determinants of Health and Equity

Dif

fere

nces

in a

cces

s to

car

eDifferences in exposures and opportunities

Differences in quality of care(ambulance slow or goes the wrong way)

Accurately assess present reality

• Fisherman story• Takers not just Givers (Pat Libbey)

1. Take Credit, invisible?

2. Take Responsibility, accreditation, and ask for $$

3. Take Charge, PH as Incident Commander

Use the difference to drive change

Negotiation skills

• Collaboration, win/win (.75 + .75 = 1.5)

• Isolation, win?/lose (.80 - .10 = .70)

• Subjugation, win/lose (.60 + .10 = .70)

• Mutual destruction, lose/lose, militant nonviolent resistance (.0 - .25 = -.25)

Use the difference to drive change

Leadership development, the usual suspects?

1. Mentoring, apprenticeship,

2. Risk taking - Willingness to lose/relocate (live within your means, be able to survive 6-9 months unemployment)

3. Communication - Storytelling

A vision without a task A vision without a task is but a dream;is but a dream;

a task without a vision a task without a vision is drudgery;is drudgery;

a vision and a task is a vision and a task is the hope of the world.the hope of the world.

- from a church wall in England- from a church wall in England