ANGELA ROSENBERG: Okay. Thank you. Well, actually, I'm here on behalf of my colleagues at University of North Carolina as well, and I'm talking to you about our consortium of maternal and child health programs. So I would like to --  Well, I'd just like to introduce my colleagues. Dr. Lou Margolis, uh, is from the-all of them are from the University of North Carolina. I'm sure of that. At this hour, Lou's in Maternal and Child Health, School of Public Health. And Jan Dodds, I'm not sure where they're all sitting. Jan Dodds is in School of Public Health and Nutrition. And let's see. Only left me find, Bill Van is in the back row back there, dentistry, at University of North Carolina. And let's see, Kathleen Rounds is the School of Social Work. And Jessica Lee I believe had to leave early, and also from the School of Dentistry. And you guys, have I forgotten anybody?  Please tell me. There are five of us. And I'm from the LEND Program at the-thank you-from the University of North Carolina. And, I would like to say that we came together as a consortium because we just really all started talking about it and felt like we had a need. But actually, there was a site visits, I believe. And they put us in separate rooms. And by God, you know, it was a little scary.  We tried to claim poor parking, you know, all this. But it didn't work. So, we really began to bond, and we came together, and I was looking at this and I thought really, you know, I hate to say that, I would say that we wouldn't call this best practices. We probably, we got together because we're striving to be better practices. And I think that really was the impetus for us coming together to look at our leadership training. And, I thought today, when someone said earlier a beautiful quote, "The future of public health is with those who know how to build coalitions. And I think we're learning as we go how to really build a coalition, to really improve our leadership training for all of our trainees and these various disciplines.

So, starting with that, I want to say there is a packet for you. And, when Laura and I spoke, my charge was to really give you something that I hope will be somewhat practical for those of you would like to go back. And for those of you who were thinking, we're the only MCH program on campus, I think this could still apply. Because there are programs on your campus I am sure that would love to embrace a collaborative model of leadership training. So I hope that it will be useful for everyone in the room. But, I tried to just pull different things from our beginnings and explain you little bit about how we came together and a sort where were going at this point. So if you want to refer to that, or you can just listen to me for the minutes and I'll try to give you a few highlights about what we're doing. As I reflected on this, I looked and I thought, really, I believe that our first step was we looked at what we were doing, and we thought how could we do a better as a group?  And that was in terms of our leadership training. Each of us were individually doing leadership training through different places on-campus, maybe internally. And as we began to look at those models, we felt like we could share our ideas and really come together. So, I think that sort of started the discussion. But as we came together, as you guys know, when you come together in any group, we began to share initially and talk about our course content, what we were doing didactically in community across the States.

We examined our models, our curriculi, so all of those practical steps. You know, we had to talk about sticky issues like funding and how we were allocating our resources and programs. And I think that that's very difficult, as you know. And that took some time. To just begin to trust one another. And, as we've spoken today, I think that's really tough thing to do. We're, you know faced with the realities of limited resources and all striving to do the best we can. And it's very scary to let down your guard and really begin to share your vulnerabilities, and where you think your program was lacking, and where we could really strive to do better by working together.

So I do believe that was our initial step. And we do that as an ongoing process. And I think, you know, to this day, we have our times where we step back and we really have to regroup and begin to look, you know, really revision and look at our goals. We then looked at sort of a common agenda, and we started and said that we really felt like leadership training was the obvious and we were all doing that. How can we bring that together. And we developed something that, we call the leadership intensive. And again, it's in your packet and I'm going to describe in a little more detail. But all of our trainees are on different schedules and have different programs. But they take three days the beginning of the programs, and they come together, literally in, starting off in a room, but diverging into various activities, and begin to explore leadership from various perspectives. And it was kind of exciting to me with the group this morning, and talk about the internal processes of becoming a leader because that's exactly what they do. And many of the steps we described today and some of the tasks we discussed is what they do when they go through this, is they facilitate a process.

We use various tools, which I'll share with you in just a minute, after I go through the full picture. But basically, it's funny because I think when they sit down at the table, they introduce themselves, sort of like we started today. And they say I'm a physical therapist, or I'm a social worker. And that lasts just for a moment because they begin to all intermingle. And before the end of the first day, they're really talking about the issues and talking about leadership. And, their goals and their vision. And over the course of those three days, they look at leadership from an internal perspective, from a contextual perspective, relational, organizational. And, some very personal sharing goes on, and also some professional sharing about some of the problems that are common to all of our disciplines.

So, that's how this began. And it really has evolved. We've been doing is now for several years, and we have evaluations to show that's not only very effective while they're there, but at the end of the year the trainees come back and, and speak to us about the experience. So that's the first step. About four months later, our trainees come back together for a conflict resolution workshop, which is again a full day. And again, discuss the issues relating to some of the things they talked about in the group today. So I won't go over all those, but many of them are the high points of that session. Again, it brings a group back together after they've all on out and they're doing their individual discipline-related activities or what have you. So it's a neat coming together again. And what we've begun to see, which is exciting, as relationships are forming, and in between those sessions, trainees are meeting up, getting together, discussing their issues with each other, discussing their leadership goals and vision. And actually, several have collaborated on various research and other community endeavors. So, that to us is just, some of the outcomes that we're just beginning to look at and actually developing better ways to measure those outcomes. We find very exciting, and not only are they working together with trainees, but they're also looking to other discipline leaders. So I've, I know some of the LEND trainees have gone to the other disciplines and looked at them for possible research activities and other endeavors. So seeing that cross-disciplinary pollination is really exciting.

As we continue the third and not the final, at this point, stages of leadership reflection, we bring all the trainees back together at the end of the year, and we bring faculty together. Which is as you know, a really rare thing on some campuses, to get together, not only the colleagues in our group, but the directors of programs and others, and we have a bit of a celebration, and the first year it happened it was quite amazing event. I mean just to see some of the faculty from other programs that, actually, I've never met. And some of the directors from other programs, come together in a room and begin to talk about, possible agenda for, research in collaboration. The trainees all come to that and have a, a two-hour reflection at that time and discuss how they set their vision and their vision at the beginning of the year and their three-day intensive, and where they've come since then, and how it's evolved and changed, which is the natural course of the leadership training. So in all of those ways, we've sort of come to the table where we are now, and in your packet, I've really described in detail some of the measures we've used to look at some of the leadership situational analysis measures. I've even giving you phone numbers if you'd like to contact organizations to get information on those tools. And I provided you with an evaluation, that we've been using that I think is in a change process, but it's a basic evaluation, but it's allowed us to capture information over the course of several years. That sort of lets us know how we're doing in our barometer for, for changing some of the things we're doing. I'd like to say we're trying to continue to strive for like I said, better practices, and we're looking at a model of cultural competencies. And I think as we talk about this in the room today, it's funny because every time I think any about programs would reflect on that daunting task, that we'd come back to the same thing, and it's part of the program that should be inherent in everything we do is looking at the differences, whether it be ethnicity, or socioeconomic or all the various ways that we're all different. And, I think it was really a, quite a mountain to climb. And as we came together, we decided that we'd began to tackle it together. And we have a full-time doctoral student working with us this year from the Dominican Republic. She's fantastic, and she's helpless tremendously, also, and in terms of, we have a full agenda and many, many things outlined and looking at tackling the issue of cultural competence. And we hope to have a curriculum, at least a draft of a curriculum in place at the end of this academic year, where we'll begin to incorporate an interdisciplinary curriculum, which will include some didactics coming together, and then, of course experientials in our various disciplines.

So, in a nutshell, you know, it's been a, really a journey that we're still on, and I think that it involved a lot of different elements and we're still sort learn from each other in how we can navigate various disciplines and the demands of a very full academic curriculum that we all have. And time, which is always the barrier for us-not to mention parking, which I mentioned earlier-but the time to bring our trainees together, and every time we hit up against it, we seem to be finding some ways around that. So it's been very exciting. And I don't know if we're, take questions, but at any rate, thank you.