Working in partnership Zambia National Public Health Institute (ZNPHI) and Ministry of Health (MOH), Workforce Development colleagues from IHR-SP UK and Zambia teams delivered a three-day work Leadership and Management workshop. The workshop was aimed at middle managers, attended by colleagues from the ZNPHI and MOH. Its success resulted in several participants expressing interest in sharing the material to members of the wider public health system across Zambia by way of a ‘train the trainer’ approach.

As a result, the Workforce Development and Emergency Preparedness teams designed a train the trainer version of this workshop and returned to Lusaka from 30th July – 4th August, where 19 colleagues from ZNPHI, MoH, and the UKHSA- IHR programme gathered to pilot this new way of working.

The aim of the course was to create a cohort of competent trainers who were confident in delivering a leadership and management development course that can be tailored to the local context. The content was designed to take into account the needs articulated by the participants (ZNPHI & MoH colleagues) and following this, the training was designed and delivered in three parts;

 Part 1 – Revision of Leadership and Management content

Part 2 - Knowledge and skills for effective teaching and facilitation

Part 3 – Micro teaching exercises – participants are given the opportunity to test their facilitation skills with their peers with the chance to gather feedback

This train the trainer delivery approach aims to introduce sustainability to the project through upskilling the existing Public Health workforce in Zambia to deliver this training to their own colleagues, ensuring leadership and management knowledge and skills can be effectively shared across the workforce. This train the trainer approach was the first of its kind for the Workforce Development team and involved cross-project working with a member of the Emergency Preparedness Team with an extensive background in education and training.

 Photo 1: Delegates with their certificates having completed the training

Photo 2: Microteaches in progress

Photo 3: Facilitator, Paul Furtado presenting on training other professionals

The facilitators observed how information from the initial delivery (January 2023) had been retained, reflected upon, and internalised by participants. Feedback from the July training was overwhelmingly positive, with all learning objectives being evaluated by participants at strongly agree or agree

Participants are enthusiastic to take the next steps which will involve co-facilitation of trainings scheduled for October/November 2023. These sessions will be evaluated to help us further understand the effectiveness of the previous training activities. Our next steps will be to work with ZNPHI to build a sustainable model for the in-house delivery of these trainings going forward.