Academy Trains Teams Across the Nation, Strengthens Skills in Health Leadership and Equity

The Leadership Academy for the Public’s Health (LAPH) is a one-year applied leadership training program designed to build leadership capacity, strengthen multi-sector collaboration within community health initiatives across the country and deepen participants’ skills in health equity. The Leadership Academy runs both a national program (NLAPH) and California program (CaLAPH) operated under the Public Health Institute’s Center for Health Leadership & Impact. Since 2011, the Leadership Academy has trained 885 leaders which made up 19 community teams from 48 U.S. states and territories.

Community policy and practice change

The Leadership Academy’s multi-sector teams are made up of four people per team and the teams collaborate on an applied health leadership project, focusing their growth and skills on supporting existing work in their communities.

Despite challenges posed by COVID, the leadership teams had very positive results in 2021:

• The Housing in the High Desert Region Team built out a leadership structure for the larger cohort working on affordable housing in San Bernardino;
• The Shasta Home Visiting Team mapped out overlapping connections and work among team members to improve collaboration around home visiting services;
• The Clean the Air of Riverside County Team built a diverse group of stakeholders to engage in developing a youth-led tobacco control toolkit;

Participants from previous years’ cohorts continue to see successes, such as:

• Tripling the number of underrepresented medical residents at the Medical University of South Carolina;
• Helping to advance a New York city-wide law restricting tobacco purchases for people under 21;
• Increasing lead screening rates from 80% to 100% in New Jersey’s Burlington County; and
• Implementing Health in All Policies (HiAP) in local governments across the country.

In total, 850 ideas of ingenuity have been generated through LAPH program participation—resulting in systems and policy changes that have impacted 37 million people.

Impacts on Leadership and Capacity

Listed below are participant findings and impacts from the California and National Leadership Academy survey reports.

In Building Public Health Competencies for Cross-Sector Leadership: Results from the National Leadership Academy for the Public’s Health, published in Health Promotion Practice, PHI’s National Leadership Academy for the Public’s Health (NLAPH) evaluated the first nine cohorts (from 2012–2020) that completed the yearlong public health leadership program. Additional findings included, high proportions of participants who reported increased leadership skills, cross-sector collaboration, continued use of tools and concepts, and a positive impact on their communities after participating in the program.

Participants rated themselves in five leadership domains and across 17 leadership competencies of the program and all of the domains and all competencies had statistically significant improvements from the beginning to the end of participants’ program year. Improvements in leadership skills were seen across all cohorts, geographies, roles, and sectors.

A core component of the Leadership Academy is deepening community engagement. Some of the intersectoral leadership competencies that improved most over the program year include engaging voices that are representative of the communities served; assessing and prioritizing community health needs and assets; and facilitating linkages between organizations/movements with shared goals. Findings and the success of the program suggests the need for leadership programs that emphasize adaptive and collaborative leadership to advance community health and equity.

For more information, see the California-based academy and National academy survey results or visit the Center for Health Leadership & Impact website. 

Operated by PHI’s Center for Health Leadership & Impact, the Leadership Academy for the Public’s Health (LAPH) runs both a national program (NLAPH) and California-based program (CaLAPH) which are funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the California Endowment respectively. The Leadership Learning Network (LLN) brings together LAPH alumni and provides continued engagement on public health leadership.