Public Health Organization

Question: Describe the skills a leader of a public health organization needs and explain why they are needed. Justify your answer through the effective use of academic references and citations. Answer: Introduction: The increase in the complexities of the global health care system is developing new challenges and options for the public health workers and gives them the opportunity to apply their leadership quality in order to face the challenge and meet the goals. The new decade has experienced leading fresh alliances and also their innovations in the public healthcare sector. But it is also important to develop new skills in the leaders to meet the target of the organization. In this report the need of skills in leadership in public healthcare system will be discussed (Dreachslin, 2015). Leadership Skills in a Public Health Organization According to Northouse (2015), leadership in the field of public health is driven by the fundamental and profound sense of mission. The motivation comes from the sense of purpose that makes the leaders leave their sidelines of comfort and venture into the controversies, despite the outcome uncertainties. Therefore, successful leaders in a public health organization should have the skills and strategies of effective leadership. These skills have been discussed below. Leaders of public health need to articulate to their community partners, staff and peers the social determinants certainty to the future of public health. Leadership skills should bring on the true reform that should include the development of interventions for keeping the communities healthy apart from improving the controlling costs and medical care accessibility (Rowitz, 2013). This forms the core of the public health organizations. Leaders should have the ability to lead the organizations through change and should gain the skills in change management for supporting the staff and guiding them through the times of transformation (Northouse, 2015). This skill is important for taking advantage of the opportunities at the time budgets under strain. They should develop consistent and clear arguments for bringing about the changes in the healthcare system for characterization of the future (Rowitz, 2013). Development of constituency, cultivation of new partners, application of community organizing skills to the management skills of traditional public health are the policies required to be developed by the leaders of public health. As stated by Shickle et al. (2014), the community or the public part of public health has been very important and the leaders need for the developing partnerships, strategies and joint program interventions for reinforcement of health in all the policies. The key notion of public health includes the fact of health in all policies and the leaders need to establish the linkages to social services and community planning (Tulchinsky Varavikova, 2014). The leaders need to make the economic case for the interventions that includes building up the linkages with the federal reserve, housing interventions and community health workers and these make up the non-traditional roles of a public health leader. Leaders should promulgate the thought that investing in the process of prevention can lead to the production of tangible savings as it forms the key component of public health. However, quantification of the savings derived from the prevention strategies has not been established (Shickle et al., 2014). Leaders of public health need to develop tactical and sophisticated techniques of leadership for running the public health organization. They should have the skill of functioning in an ambiguous arena without hierarchies and clear boundaries by implementing a chaotic context as the point of change (Dreachslin, 2015). The leader has to play the role of both a team builder and a backroom agent by continually forging and knitting together unlikely and multiple partners (Stanhope Lancaster, 2015). As the nature of the field of public health is relentlessly interdisciplinary and broad, the leaders must have the skill to choreograph the number of parties as they serve to be the competitors for the available resources. They should have the ability to identify the common goals and can bring into alignment a diverse set of capabilities, resources, objectives and viewpoints. As discussed by Stanhope Lancaster (2015), the leader should develop his skills of coalition building by maintaining patience and calmness even when the problems are being escalated and if required, should make wrenching tradeoffs (Shickle et al., 2014). In this realm, the leader must demonstrate the values of interdependence along with independence. The public health leaders should possess strong communication skills as it helps to efficiently interact with the team members and understand the core values of the employees. As stated by Tulchinsky Varavikova (2014), strong working ethics of the public health leaders will help to deliver the optimum results and make the best out of the situation under the given circumstances for achieving the goals of the organization. The leaders collaborate with the healthcare professionals, social workers and other staff members for the demonstration of the teamwork skills. Professional interpersonal skills are essential for developing a healthy relationship with the management, clients and colleagues and the leaders should make a proactive approach and initiatives for organizing the public health programs that aids to solve the daily problems (Stanhope Lancaster, 2015). Apart from the above-mentioned skills, the leaders of a public health organization should have an unwavering commitment towards the principles of social justice and mission of public health. He should have a deep understanding and interdisciplinary orientation of the various healthcare collaborations and implement it into practice. He should be politically perceptive and get his works done amidst the opposing situations. A thirst for the big picture and an appetite for innovation can lead to the formation of a successful leader in a public health organization (Tulchinsky Varavikova, 2014). Conclusion: Thus it can be concluded that a public health problem poses lot of challenges. Therefore it is very important to address those complications with a good leadership quality and to make the leadership effective it is also important to develop key skills such as communication, cultivation of new partnership, flexibility, innovation, etc. References Dreachslin, J. L. (2015). Diversity Leadership from the Inside Out.Hawai'i Journal of Medicine Public Health,74(7 Suppl 1), 5. Northouse, P. G. (2015).Leadership: Theory and practice. Sage publications. Rowitz, L. (2013).Public health leadership. Jones Bartlett Publishers. Shickle, D., Day, M., Smith, K., Zakariasen, K., Moskol, J., Oliver, T. (2014). Mind the public health leadership gap: the opportunities and challenges of engaging high-profile individuals in the public health agenda.Journal of Public Health, fdu003. Stanhope, M., Lancaster, J. (2015).Public health nursing: Population-centered health care in the community. Elsevier Health Sciences. Tulchinsky, T. H., Varavikova, E. A. (2014).The new public health. Academic Press.