Subject: Update on the Harvard Ministerial Leadership Program: Promoting Government Leadership and Performance
From: "Harvard Ministerial Leadership Program" <[email-masked]>
To: David Sergeenko
Date: Mon, 5 Mar 2018 16:38:20 +0000

Spring 2018

The Hon. Concieta Sortane, Education Minister of Mozambique greeting members of the Ministerial Program expert faculty at a recent Workshop in Maputo

Ramping Up Technical Assistance: Ministerial Program Launches Innovative Virtual Platform

Since inception in 2012, the Harvard Ministerial Leadership Program has included a (post-Harvard) in-country Follow-up component designed to support participating Ministers in achieving their primary (legacy) goals by providing planning and implementation management capacity to senior officials.  Over the past seven years, 21 countries and 272 officials have participated in the Follow-up component.  Although a significant number of countries benefitted, the Follow-up was highly selective only inviting four or five countries annually.  Furthermore, after seven years, it is evident that the Ministerial Program does not have the capacity to sustain this effort at the intensity needed to make a lasting impact.

With the aim of ensuring that all participating Ministers have access to post-Harvard training and technical support, the Ministerial Program will soon launch a Virtual Implementation Platform (VIP)—a unique virtual program of technical assistance and capacity development designed to support implementation of Ministers’ legacy goals. READ MORE>>

From Classroom to Country: Harvard Students Working with Health and Education Ministers

Last January, Marisa Steinmetz and Allison Casey, two students from the Harvard Graduate School of Education landed in the Republic of Madagascar with a mission from the Ministry of Education: to understand teacher absenteeism and identify possible solutions to this problem.

This kind of challenge provides an unrivaled opportunity for practical learning.  As part of its post-Harvard technical support to Ministers, the Ministerial Program has tapped its’ three partner Harvard Schools to launch the Ministerial Student Research Program.  READ MORE>>

Harvard Ministerial Doctoral Fellow, Denizhan Duran

Announcing the Harvard Ministerial Doctoral Fellowship

Denizhan Duran has been selected as the first Harvard Ministerial Doctoral Fellow.  A graduate of Middlebury College, Denizhan is currently enrolled as a Doctor of Public Health student at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Through previous positions at the World Bank, World Health Organization, Clinton Health Access Initiative, and the Center for Global Development, Denizhan has experience working in Côte D’Ivoire, Ghana, Ethiopia and Malawi.  For the purpose of this Fellowship, Denizhan will work with the Harvard Ministerial Leadership Program and the Côte D’Ivoire Ministries of Health and Finance to conduct research to develop policy recommendations on how Côte D’Ivoire can increase fiscal space for health through budget reprioritization and taxation analyses. READ MORE>>

Featured Stories

Harvard’s Follow-up Support in Uganda Leads to Increased Fiscal Space

Following participation in the Harvard Ministerial Leadership Forums by Uganda’s Ministers of Finance and Health, a Follow-up team of senior health and finance ministry officials began work with the Ministerial Program and its partners. A key focus of this work was the need to reallocate existing budget to priority health areas such as primary health care and capture fiscal space to increase available health funding. By June 2016, the inter-ministerial team had created fiscal space in the health budget to the value of over $22 million for a range of actions designed to strengthen health worker productivity, procurement and supply chain management with the goal of improving the standard of care in frontline health facilities.

According to team members, fiscal space was achieved by applying four of the health financing strategies recommended by the Program. READ MORE>>

The ‘D-Team’: Cape Verde’s Use of Leadership as a Basis for Health Reform

Following the participation of both the Health and Finance Ministers in the  Harvard Ministerial Forums, Cape Verde Ministers mandated a team of top health and finance officials dubbed the  ‘D-team’ to work with the Ministerial Program to strengthen health service delivery and increase budget effectiveness.

The Harvard Ministerial Program stressed that all personnel are leaders in the effort to improve health service delivery. In order to strengthen the participants’ leadership capability, the training included building skills in team management, conflict management, and interpersonal communication. Using the Delivery Approach and tools created by the D-Team, each health center prepared an implementation plan aligned with the D-Team’s priorities for health worker productivity and procurement. The implementation of the centers’ plans has been supervised by members of the D-Team who visited the health centers at least once a year to monitor progress, identify challenges, and work with staff to resolve these.

According to the D-Team, health centers have responded positively to working towards a common goal. READ MORE>>

Dr. Fisseha (left) with former Ethiopian Health Minister, Dr. Kesetebirhan Admasu

Celebrated Reproductive Health Professor Joins Advisory Board

Dr. Senait Fisseha, MD, JD, Director of International Programs for the Susan Thompson Buffet Foundation and Clinical Professor of Obstetrics & Gynecology at the University of Michigan Medical School, has been appointed to the Advisory Board of the Harvard Ministerial Leadership Program. As the founding executive director of the University of Michigan’s Center for International Reproductive Health Training, Dr. Fisseha has spent her career leading groundbreaking research and training programs to improve reproductive health care in Ethiopia. She has received the highest Health Sector’s honor from the Ethiopian Federal Ministry of Health, the University of Michigan Bicentennial Alumni Award, and serves as a key advisor to WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.   Advisory Board Chair, Dr. Julio Frenk, lauded Dr. Fisseha’s, “distinguished track record as an advocate at the global level for women’s reproductive rights and programs,” and said that the Advisory Board is, “very pleased to have the opportunity to work with Senait.” READ MORE>>

The Harvard Ministerial Leadership Program is a joint initiative of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Harvard Kennedy School of Government, and the Harvard Graduate School of Education in collaboration with Big Win Philanthropy, and with the support of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies, the GE Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation.

https://ministerialleadership.harvard.edu/

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