Evaluating Leadership Development Competencies of Clinicians to Build Health Equity in America

Journal of Continuing Education in the Health Professions (09/07/23) Henry, Ellison; Chandler, Caroline; Laux, Jeff; et al.

Researchers implemented the three-year Clinical Scholars (CS) equity-centered leadership development training program across three dimensions of competencies to assess advancement among five cohorts of healthcare professionals. Learning modules included 25 core competencies, with each competency assigned to either the personal, interpersonal, organizational or community and systems impact leadership domain. Participants incorporated program-acquired skills and knowledge into their communities by implementing Wicked Problem Impact Projects. Each cohort in the 169-fellow CS Program comprised 29-35 participants. The researchers evaluated participants' self-ratings of their competency knowledge, self-efficacy and use at the program's start and 6, 18 and 36 months later. A lack of significant three-way interaction between time, domain and dimension prompted the authors to repurpose the model with three two-way interactions covering time/domain, time/dimension and domain/dimension. Two-way dimension/domain interaction was also insignificant, so only time/domain and time/dimension remained valid. Participants' self-reported ratings for their knowledge, self-efficacy and use competency dimensions improved over time, with self-efficacy across competencies showing the most improvement. The researchers concluded that these findings validate the hypothesis that "participants gained significant skills to address issues of the social determinants of health that lead to health inequity" through a mix of training and action- and application-based learning.

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