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Evans School of Public Policy & Governance

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Alumni Spotlight: Birara Melese

Although the nutrition case team is in its final structure, we are hoping to elevate it to the Directorate level. To accomplish this, I am developing a concept which will be submitted to the Minister of Health. In addition, Ethiopia currently has no National Food and Nutrition Policy. Together with my team, we have engaged stakeholders and advocated with higher officials in an effort to finalize our every first National Food and Nutrition Policy. The policy is now almost final and will be submitted to the council of ministers for their approval. With my team, I organized and conducted a large national nutrition program review and operationalization meeting; attended by more than 500 people. This meeting was the first of its kind; with both federal and regional high level officials attending. We also organized the integrated, multisectoral coordination, linkage, and implementation of  both nutrition specific and sensitive interventions as well as supportive supervision to regions, zones, woredas and kebeles levels; again, a first of its kind.

Since the program, I have found ways to exercise the knowledge and skills I acquired. Before the IPPHL training, I was directly supervising and coordinating 13 staff members. However, after the training, I have divided the team in to three sub-teams and assigned sub-team leaders; empowering and trusting them to take on assignments and serve our customers. This new structure minimizes my engagement in routine activities allowing me to focus on more strategic area, to invest in myself, and to exercise different influencing styles.

My policy memo is currently considered a ‘live’ document which my organization and nutrition development partners are focusing on. I am negotiating with UNICEF to start implementation in 100 woredas (sensitization, incorporation in to the annual plan, etc. have started), and we are also working to develop the services packages which will be distributed to all facilities.

Lastly, I have created a personal development plan and started implementation. I am dedicating more time for myself compared with the previous time in which I was totally engaged and sometime overwhelmed with work. I try to exercise delegation, empowering others in order to spend more time on strategic thinking. In addition, I am working to improve my influencing style which were identified as low score across different scales (negotiation, rationalization, assertion, inspiration, bridging). I am exercising each style in order to improve.

Alumni Spotlight: Abdulkarim Dahiru

The IPPHL fellowship has resulted in major improvements to my work. Though still at the same position I was before the program, there has been an increase in ad-hoc tasks I undertake. I was made a member of the Nasarawa State Strategic Health Development Plan committee. This is the most important policy document to guide the planning for health for the next five years. To be worthy of selection to be part of this team was a great accomplishment and it afforded me the opportunity to set the agenda for health in my state. Work in my department has become more efficient as I have learned to delegate tasks effectively, learning from the FYI model.

I am now more assertive and direct when negotiating with stakeholders, a leadership trait I worked tirelessly to develop during the fellowship.  A direct benefit of this was securing partnerships for the implementation of my policy memo. Institute of Human Virology Nigeria (IHVN) and Seamhealth Innovations in collaboration with the state are piloting electronic health records in two hospitals in the state. The hardware have been supplied and training will soon commence as we expect to go live in the second quarter of 2018.

I attended a course on advocacy and policy influencing in December last year and most of the concepts taught were similar to those I learned in the fellowship. I am really glad that I got to be part of the first cohort of the IPPHL. My successes since the program motivated a lot of my colleagues and friends to apply for next cohort.

Alumni Spotlight: Solomon Woldeamanuel

Since the program ended, I have found ways to practice the leadership concepts learned during the program. Currently, I am preparing to conduct an assessment prior to delivering supervisory skills training to all staff of the ministry of health who are working in a supervisory capacity. In addition, I am actively participating in one of the flagship programs in the human resource development directorate; the health development army daily meeting. Through this meeting, I have negotiated with the team on methods to provide effective and constructive comments to them as well as to those providing health science supportive supervision.

Progress has also been made on the implementation of my policy memo. I have discussed with the human resource development directorate about the implementation of my policy memo and he suggested to make an assessment to identify and analyze whether the experts we work with have, in fact, been providing supportive supervision after taking the supervisory skills training. This will give us a better idea if our training is having the desired impact.

For my own continued development, I successfully completed a facilitation skills training course. Having considered my Masters Degree in public health in health informatics, I am in the process of shifting to the human resource information system case team within the same directorate.

The biggest lesson I have learnt since finishing the program is that it would have been better to have sufficient time to have a thorough discussion with the directorate on how to implement my policy memo in a timely fashion. Hence, I would suggest to the next IPPHL Fellows to make their utmost effort to seriously discuss their proposed policy memos with their supervisors or directors; not only about the development of the memo but also the implementation of the possible solutions.