The Leadership Learning Community held its second annual Health Circle Retreat at the Doubletree Hotel - Sonoma Wine Country in Rohnert Park on April 10th - April 11th, 2008.  With this year's theme, Crossing Boundaries to Create Health in Our Communities, we explored how we can cross boundaries and build multi-stakeholder partnerships to foster systems level change that supports the health of individuals and communities.  Stay tuned for the notes and outcomes of the gathering.

Check out the Health Circle Retreat Design used for the two-day retreat!

Leadership Learning Community

Health Leadership Learning Circle

The Leadership Learning Community conducted a scan of the field of Health Leadership for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, RWJF. As part of conducting the scan LLC convened more than 30 national representatives of health leadership programs to talk about their work, their challenges and opportunities for increasing the impact of leadership development in the field of health. Participants described the costs of fragmentation that undermines efforts to develop a unifying vision or coordinate a collective response or reform agenda to address the degradation of health care.

LLC tested the idea and possible value of forming a Health Affinity Circle among participants in the RWJ scan focus group. There was enthusiastic support for the potential to connect resources, tools and learning among diverse programs, and to build stronger connections that might lead to joint action, collaboration and partnerships among programs and their graduates.

LLC also conducted a scan of health leadership programs for youth, seniors and immigrants on behalf of The California Endowment TCE. A number of focus groups were held throughout California to engage participants from these constituencies in identifying health leadership needs and capacity in California. LLC is currently conducting an evaluation for TCE with 7 of their leadership development grantees. The evaluation is bringing representatives of these organizations together in a community of learning and practice that will focus on lifting lessons across their experiences about how to cultivate boundary crossing leadership capacity.

The LLC gathered a small group at LLC’s national meeting, Creating Space to talk about initiating a Health Affinity Circle. (See notes from the gathering) In the summer and fall of 2006 LLC formally initiated a national Health Affinity Learning Circle. The goals and objectives of this circle will be refined as circle participants are convened to define their shared understanding of purpose. Several early ideas have been expressed about what might be accomplished by a Health Affinity Circle:

• Increase social capital among diverse health leadership development programs

• Develop a framework that connects leaders across multiple issues and sub fields

• Identify learning and action priorities

• Introduce new tools to increase opportunities for virtual learning

• Introduce innovative curricula and evaluation tools

A Health Affinity Circle Retreat was held on March 1-2, 2007.  Click here to access preparation documents, meeting notes, and retreat resources.

If you are interested in joining the Health Affinity Circle please contact deborah@leadershiplearning.org. We also encourage you to post and share resources that could support the work of other health leadership development practitioners.