Benefits for the Health Sector

STORY 1 – UGANDA and SOUTH SUDAN

“When I was admitted to the IMHL program, the course founders and its management were hopeful on the road to help a continent (Africa) and country (Uganda) in need of management development. While in the program, the IMHL supported knowledge transfer of the pedagogy and resource materials to our maiden venture into Africa at the Health Leadership Symposium in Kampala. At this symposium, the simple conclusion of all management and leadership scholars was that "Uganda and indeed the rest of Africa could do 30% more with the resources at hand". The key to tapping into this potential was management development in the region and continent and IMHL scale-up was considered one of the most viable options.

Since then, the IMHL has taken more students into the program to build the pool of people that would hopefully start management development initiatives in the country and region. At the symposium, the Leadership Initiative for Public Health in East Africa (LIPHEA) was hatched and is currently being managed by the School of Public Health at Makerere University in Kampala. Due to lack of pedagogy and competent professors, the initiative may not have evolved to IMHL standards but the principle remains. In addition, the Management Institute of Uganda has since developed a management and leadership course that is being funded by the World Bank in Uganda. I look forward to fruits from these break away initiatives.

On my account as a graduate of the IMHL program, I worked for WHO in Uganda for 2 years following the course. With my "IMHL Tool Kit", work became real easy. The IMHL was handy in controlling the Ebola outbreak (see “The Ebola Bundibugyo”) response where I took leadership and management responsibility of the international response that involved WHO, CDC, UNICEF, MSF, the government of Uganda, Uganda Red Cross Society and several other players. The question I would never answer is "How would I have managed without IMHL competencies"?

In the same year, I was to deal with a Wild Polio Virus Outbreak in Northern Uganda. Given the political profile of the Polio Eradication initiative, this was another public health emergency of international concern I had to deal within a year. Again, the IMHL couldn't have been more handy as the response involved not only several national and international players but also involved yet a new immunizations delivery strategy (see "House-to-house vaccination campaigns"). This outbreak was considered to have originated from Southern Sudan.

In the same year 2009, there was a Cholera Outbreak documented to have originated from Southern Sudan and before the year ended, I had to lead an investigation of a new disease outbreak (see "Nodding Disease in Kitgum") that not only was linked to Oncocerca Vulvulus but was thought to be epidemiologically linked to Southern Sudan. The next work station was therefore destined to be Southern Sudan.

With my "IMHL tool kit", I took the courage to leave WHO Uganda to join Management Sciences for Health in a job that was to be based in the new and emerging nation of South Sudan. I say courage not because I was more daring but because I "reflected" on the job and one of the IMHL’s consolidated professional missions of "helping the poorest children" that superseded my love for Uganda. Besides, my new found job was "immunization management development" in a post conflict South Sudan. Never before did I feel more equipped for "changing the world of Immunization" and myself in a justified and expanded management/leadership role than 2 years after the IMHL course.

While on the job in South Sudan, the IMHL has helped me to provide high-quality management development assistance by building on existing systems and local capacity. "Collaboration and building partnerships" with local, regional and international stakeholders to create consensus and local buy-ins for change and increased capacity in immunization program management: this is the task at hand.

In line with the strategic approach in my organization Management Sciences for Health, I take pride that I live with the people I support, dwell on identifying as well as correcting the skills and competency needed to build a national immunization program. I sincerely look forward to a time when the national staff say or feel that "they have done it themselves". That will be a time when I will look for another country or population of children in need of my services. This is my story and aspiration hatched and nursed by the IMHL of McGill University.”

Advisor, Expanded Program for Immunization, Management Sciences for Health, South Sudan --  July 2011

STORY 2 – USA and KUWAIT

“In 2006 Dr. Kathleen Ruddy learned about a new graduate program at McGill University in Montreal, the International Masters for Health Leadership (IMHL).  She felt that the IMHL would be an excellent, next best step on her career path, an opportunity to combine her expertise as a breast cancer surgeon with her vision to transform the approach to breast cancer that would emphasize prevention as the best way to "treat" the disease.  In the spring of 2006 Dr. Ruddy was accepted into the first class of the IMHL and in June she joined seventeen other candidates from around the world to begin eighteen months of intensive study. Dr. Ruddy's goal was to create an International Breast Service, one that would bring the most innovative breast cancer treatments and prevention modalities to women in emerging countries.

In September 2006 Dr. Ruddy and her fellow IMHL candidate, Dr. Salman Al Sabah, a surgeon and member of the Royal Family of Kuwait, joined forces to create the first Breast Service at the Royal Hayat Hospital for women in Kuwait City.  In the spring of 2007 the Kuwait Cancer Center, under the direction of the Ministry of Health and with the guidance of Drs. Ruddy and Al Sabah, created the country’s first integrated Breast Service.  Also, in 2007 Dr. Ruddy and two other IMHL candidates, Drs. William Mbabazi and Possy Mugyenyi, received a grant from the World Health Organization to provide mammogram screening for women in Uganda.  Dr. Ruddy’s anchoring project for the IMHL, to create an International Breast Service, seemed to be off to a good start with the inauguration of these first two projects. 

The broad multi-cultural opportunities and educational experiences of the IMHL helped to inform and reinforce Dr. Ruddy’s own vision for a global initiative focused on the prevention of breast cancer. After more than two decades in the surgical trenches, working to cure women with breast cancer, Dr. Ruddy discovered her true vocation, her life’s work:  to help as many women as possible avoid breast cancer altogether, to work for the "pure cure" – prevention.  And so, in April 2008, just prior to receiving her International Masters for Health Leadership, Dr. Ruddy created the Breast Health & Healing Foundation whose mission is to discover the causes of breast cancer and to use that knowledge to prevent the disease.”

For more details on Dr. Ruddy’s creation of an international foundation to change and improve the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of breast cancer worldwide, see: www.breasthealthandhealing.com/learn/drktruddy.html

President, Breast Health and Healing Foundation, Medical Director (Breast Service), Clara Maas Medical Center, USA