GHLI Programs in South Africa
Established in 2006, the Advanced Health Management Program (AHMP) combines distance learning and intensive workshops to provide health care managers working in HIV/AIDS with critical management skills. The year-long program offered in South Africa’s nine provinces now graduates more than 150 students per year. Many graduates of the program have advanced to senior positions in their organizations, while others have found significant outside funding to sustain and expand the projects they first designed as course assignments. The AHMP is a collaboration between the Yale Global Health Leadership Institute and the Foundation for Professional Development.
This management development course is tailor-made for African health care executives and professionals in the public and not-for-profit sector. Participants are introduced to management concepts that enable them to become transformational leaders in finding practical solutions to the challenges of HIV/AIDS and TB.
The program is designed to help participants develop key managerial competency in areas such as financial management, operations management, human resources, project management, marketing, self-management, resource mobilization, leadership, and monitoring and evaluation. The assignments and group work help students to develop skills necessary for preparing business plans, action plans, monitoring and evaluation plans, and human resources tools.
At the beginning of the program, students identify a problem to solve or an innovative idea to implement over the 12 months of the course. During the year they collect a portfolio of evidence on their successes and failures. This methodology is a proven, powerful tool for developing transformational leaders, encouraging the participants to become proactive managers able to mobilize resources, solve problems and implement ideas. This approach develops a manager’s ability to think critically about challenges and solutions, taking management and leadership beyond the traditional confines of management training.
As one of the largest health leadership programs in the world, AHMP is being adapted for replication in neighboring Swaziland, Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Namibia, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
South Africa has also participated as a delegation to the GHLI Conference.
