LAURA KAVANAGH: Good afternoon. Do you want to take a moment and just stand up and stretch for a minute?  We've been going for an awfully long time. Just stand up and stretch. Don't move, but stretch within. And while you're standing, I want to ask you a question. Because I've run across three people today alone who are former trainees who are now faculty members in MCH training programs. Can you raise your hand if you're a former MCH trainee, and look around?  An outcome, that's right. Let's capture that in the Web broadcast, and we can, thank you very much. I'm gonna talk a little bit, and I know that we're pressed for time. About MCH leadership. And I was determined that I was going to come up with, one quotation from somebody who was a Fed. This is a former Fed. One who cares about other people, one who demonstrates a belief in the importance of enhancing the gifts of people, and one whose focus is on the future. This is a leader who helps to grow the next generation. And this is actually from a wonderful report, that he wrote about leaders and stories and how you can encourage in the next generation about, through storytelling. And we've heard that as a theme throughout many of your presentations. And it came from a Fed.

One other, before I start, a leader brings hope. I thought, I've been reflecting on this so much as I've been sitting through some meetings in our agency recently. A leader brings hope. That doesn't mean putting on rose-colored glasses, painting on a happy face, and avoiding problems by spouting clichés on positive thinking. Highly effective leaders help others deal with the reality of current problems by focusing their attention on what's possible. They use the dream of what could be as a magnet to draw everyone forward. I hope that you all can celebrate the, your role in providing leadership and a vision and hope, in some trying times. These are difficult times for, for many different reasons. Overview of my talk. I'm gonna talk very briefly about the history of MCH leadership training, and how we came to define ourselves as a leadership training program and how that distinguishes us from some other training programs. A little bit about current best practices. We reviewed your progress reports. Yes, we read them. I know you've all been working hard on them. I'm sure you started them months ago. But they're due this month. And one of the sections that we asked you to reflect on in your progress reports for the first time last year was, highlight some areas that you feel you do a particularly good job of leadership training, and I'll pull some examples, from that.

And then a little bit about, measuring leadership attainment. And you're gonna hear a lot more about, some of our efforts in this area, from Jenny Reed. Angela's going to speak this morning also about some innovations at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. They've done a wonderful job of developing a leadership curriculum across their training programs there. Both within the Children's Bureau, which was founded in 1912, and the Maternal and Child Health Bureau, which has evolved over many iterations over time, they decided to focus on leadership as the primary focus of the training program. One, to distinguish it from some workforce development training programs, and because historically, MCH has had very few dollars to train the next generation of leaders in MCH, they wanted to focus very critically on the next generation of leaders to affect change over time. Several years ago, before coming to the Bureau, I was fortunate to be part of an evaluation team that conducted an evaluation at the MCH training program. And as part of that evaluation, we visited 35 sites across the country at MCH training programs. So we got a good flavor. And these were some of the things that emerged then, and then I'll talk a little bit about the progress reports.

The training programs differed to a great extent, on the degree of the curricular emphasis on leadership training. Some said judge us by our outcomes. We're producing folks who are leaders in their field, and we don't particularly have a curricular emphasis on leadership. That doesn't seem to be the predominant theme of the folks who chose to come to this meeting, but in the existing MCH training program, there's a wide spectrum of, of how much there, of a curricular emphasis there is on leadership training. Also, the extent of their focus on policy work or academic accomplishment, publishing papers, moving up with an academic setting, versus clinical excellence. And was a tension there sometimes between a primary emphasis on clinical excellence, and being able to produce those who are felt to be excellent clinicians in the field, and then there, the tension of also being excellent researchers or excellent in policy work, and how do you make all of those work if you decide you want to move along all of those different domains at the same time. Their methods to train for leadership, and I'll talk about that a little bit more based on, more recently on your progress reports. And also, the groups who were selected to receive leadership training. In some programs, everybody who is a LEND trainee or a nutrition trainee or a social work trainee or is a part of the graduate medical education and summer mentors programs is a leadership trainee. In other programs, they select a few who are the leadership trainees, and they receive a different sort of curriculum than the other trainees in their program.

Different approaches. The aspects of training for leadership that emerged from the training evaluation as well. Again, these are things that you've heard over and over today as well. The importance of recruitment and the criteria for recruitment, choosing people who you feel have a potential of becoming leaders. You're not with smart people. You're going to start with people who you think can certainly become leaders. Policy and community action, and the level of emphasis, that placed upon, policy and community action as an aspect of training skills building in a variety of areas from how to present to a group, how to present testimony, to how to build a coalition around an issue. And the role of mentors was emphasized time and again, the importance of mentors, the investment in developing mentors. This is one of my favorite quotes. “You've got to go out on a limb sometimes, because that's where the fruit is. Our leadership is about risk-taking, and leadership is about, um, sort of finding your own way. We've heard that from the discussion of the history of the, of leadership training, where the Bureau was asking you to do leadership training for an awfully long time before we put into words will we had in, we had in mind when we meant leadership training. These are some selected best practices. These are just a smattering of examples from your progress reports that you submitted last year. In terms of individual growth, some trainees are actually involved in curriculum development. As you go through a curriculum review process, you're involving them in developing the curriculum.

Presentation of research findings. This is a pretty common leadership development tool that many of you are using. Some of them, some of you structure it differently though. For example, within a developmental behavioral pediatrics program, there's a very, they have a grantee meeting every year, where trainees present findings, first to the audience of faculty across the grant, the training grant programs and developmental behavioral pediatrics. It's a safer environment, they get feedback there. And then they present at their professional meeting in the fall after they've had the opportunity to present in a safer environment, with the faculty across the training programs. There are many trainee-initiated projects, where you're encouraging your trainees to, who have an idea, or are pondering a problem that they really can't resolve to initiate a resolution or initiate some, some further research on that issue. Field experiences, with you serving organizations, particularly prevalent within the, leadership, education and adolescent health programs. Presenting testimony, again, very prevalent. Some of you have done a amazing job of getting state legislators to actually come to hear your trainees present. And then ask questions as they would if they were really presented testimony. And then some of you actually, your trainees actually present testimony before the state legislature, before the school board, before a variety of different policy-making bodies.

 Leadership journals, many of the trainees, maintain leadership journals, were they reflect on their leadership growth over the course of their training program. And then there are group leadership exercises. Team-building exercises. Many of these tend to start in the early phases of the interdisciplinary training program, start with a team building exercise and some leadership seminar series. Other innovations. Long-term trainees, being encouraged to mentor the shorter-term trainees, or other trainees in the program, modeling mentor ship. Public policy institutes, for ones that were in many different areas—I didn't listen to states, but the ones where there seemed to be just a few examples, I've listed the states where they're happening. In New Mexico, in New Hampshire, where both families, policymakers, and trainees come together over an extended period of time, to talk about the development of policy, how the policy process works, and actually end up influencing the policy process by the end of there, their tenure.

An alumni leadership award, to reflect that former trainees would come back an receive an alumni award that was presented to them before current trainees. So you're modeling that former trainees, this is what their achievements are, with the current trainees. And we've hear, I can't tell you how many times we've heard from site visits, how effective a marketing tool your former trainees are for encouraging new trainees to come into your program. Trainee research day, building, I've talked about that before. And coursework around foundations of MCH leadership. I mention that there some training programs take this idea of a leadership track, that's different from some of their other trainees, a policy concentration. I like the research to practice literature reviews. I was very interested this area. This exercise, all trainees from different disciplines were asked to pick a current practice in the field. And they were required to show what's the evidence that supports this practice, and present it before the group. I thought that was a great idea. And also leadership development series, this is done in, in Illinois. And two of the modules that had been developed so far included, from an idea to a grant proposal. And I have a great project idea. Now what do I do?  I suppose that leadership at one time meant muscle, but today, it means getting along with people. You can't give up. You may have to fight a battle more than once in order to win it. I want to talk very briefly about measuring leadership and one particular index that I think is just very interesting, that's being used by, I've seen it in several of your programs. But even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there. And the index someone to talk about is the Campbell Leadership Index. And they talk about leadership as being out in front, making new and creative things happen, energy, which is one aspect of this index that I particularly like, a recognition of the physical demands of leaders. Long hours, stressful days, difficult decisions, wearying travel, and public appearances. And, going hand-in-hand with that, affability, an acknowledgement that leaders need to foster teamwork and cooperation and make people feel valued.

 Dependability. Being credible and able to allocate organizational resources and manage details. It's hard to be the idea person and the person who's managing the details I think sometimes. And resilience, the ability to show optimism, mental durability, and emotional balance. I just think this is, this is a very elegant index. And then I'm gonna close with a, a quote from our leader at the Maternal and Child Health Bureau. This was at an urban Maternal and Child Health Directors' Meeting. And at the local level, MCH directors are under tremendous financial strain right now. And I appreciated this quote and was happy that when I got my slides approved, that, this remained in. Let us lead, and let us renew our efforts in these difficult times. Let us exhibit confidence, creativeness, innovation, opportunism, accurate perceptions. Let us create a vision. Flexibility, observation, effortlessness. Don't get stuck. Remember always, that a leader is a dealer in hope. Thank you.