22 – 26 MAY 2017
Through the District Led Programming, METS in collaboration with the Ministry of Health designed a tailor made competence based mentored fellowship program to strengthen the Governance leadership and management capabilities of District health managers so that they are able to execute their core essential public health functions which include: understanding health issues at the district and community, identifying and responding to health problems or threats, keeping people informed about health issues and healthy choices, engaging people and organizations in health matters, planning and implementing sound policies; to mention but a few. The nine months’ fellowship program is aimed at improving the performance of district health services for an AIDS Free Generation and the attainment of the 90-90-90 targets as well as the achievement of better health outcomes in the broader health sector. The 90-90-90 targets were a concept introduced by the United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS in 2013 aimed at ending the AIDS Epidemic. The concept aims at ensuring that 90% of people who are HIV infected will be diagnosed, 90% of people who are diagnosed will be on antiretroviral treatment and 90% of those who receive antiretroviral will achieve viral suppression.
The GLM fellowship program was designed to address the governance leadership and management capacity gaps which were identified by the Ministry of Health as reported in documents like the 2011 Health systems assessment report among others. It was also noted that the pre-service trainings for most district health managers did not have leadership and management aspects and this could affect the performance of the health sector.
METS Program enrolled the second cohort of Governance Leadership and Management (GLM) Fellows from 11 districts namely Ntoroko, Gomba, Lwengo, Lyantonde, Masaka, Katakwi, Kaberamaido, Serere, Ngora, Kumi and Bukedea. Participants from the districts included District Health Offices, Heads of Health sub-districts, District Health inspectors and District health educators. A total of 33 fellows were enrolled and this brings the total number of GLM fellows to 66.
The fellows have covered topics in Governance such as health systems and systems thinking, governance structures for the health sector, ethics, transparency and accountability. Other topics included leadership and management; and Monitoring and evaluation. They will be expected to also identify the GLM challenges that affect service delivery, analyses using evidence and prioritize these problems and implement changes that will lead to an improvement in the health services.
Charity Kyomugisha-Nuwagaba, the Deputy Program Manager METS, focused on Conflict Resolution, Management Change and Negotiation
The first cohort (which enrolled in October 2016 comprised of representatives from ten districts) are currently implementing project that will lead to an improvement of priority areas of the health system. These projects are funded by the METS program
Future plans of the Fellowship managers include training three DHT members in the rest of the CDC supported districts and hopefully cascade the training to the health facility managers.
