Leading performance improvement programs in Brazil offer a global model

Health managers in the developing world have the urgent need but seldom the opportunity to participate in leadership/management development programs. MSH's Management and Leadership Program (M&L) has worked in Brazil with the Ceará State Secretariat of Health and its School of Public Health to establish LiderNet-an electronically supported resource tailored to the specific leadership and management needs of the public health sector in Ceará, one of Brazil's poorest but most innovative states.

LiderNet employs an innovative mixture of face-to-face and remote components and offers a curriculum based on M&L's Leading and Managing Framework. The program was built on Ceará's successful face-to-face Leadership Development Program, which was designed in collaboration with MSH do Brasil and has been delivered to more than 600 health managers in the state since 1998.

LiderNet offers professional development activities to health managers dispersed over a wide geographic region who are coping with the evolving challenges of decentralization. It covers topics such as conflict resolution, motivation, team development, time management, strategic planning, and total quality management.

As they participate in the LiderNet program, managers complete action plans to address the urgent workplace issues they are facing. These action plans display a range of performance improvement objectives-from better coordination of the public health drive against dengue fever to better contamination control and cost-effectiveness of the hospital laundry service. LiderNet expands and strengthens the health care leadership base in a state with 7 million citizens. Although LiderNet was planned jointly with MSH, it is now wholly owned by the Ceará State Secretariat of Health and its public health school. It is intended to become a permanent self-directed learning community.

In its current phase, the project includes a Web site where managers share best practices for how to lead and manage in a decentralized health system.

The distance learning programs and electronic tools made available via LiderNet are dynamic components of MSH's Leadernet infrastructure, which offers professional development activities and performance improvement methodologies in Brazil, Latin America, Mozambique, Egypt, and elsewhere. These programs can empower poor regions to tap into worldwide resources that would otherwise be out of reach.

 The LiderNet flyer - [PDF - 190KB]

 Read about a LiderNet participant

« Return to Scalable, Replicable Programs