Orientation

Orientation is required for all students and consists of  separate two-hour virtual sessions taken in the order that follows.

  • Welcome and introduction to Harvard University
  • Navigating the Canvas system and using Zoom
  • Course expectations and deliverables
  • Classroom norms
  • Applied project preparation
  • Pre-work for course 1

All orientation sessions are scheduled from 8:00 a.m. – 10:00 a.m. Eastern Time (U.S. and Canada).

Curriculum Approach

Interactive, case-based learning with peer group collaboration

Most of the courses are case based. The case method provides actual global nurse and midwife leadership situations that will be familiar to nurse and midwife leaders. Participants analyze the situations and recommend a course of action to resolve those situations familiar to nurse and midwife leaders.

Students will generate an applied project that begins in the first course and culminates in the final course under the direction of the course instructors and a project mentor.

Remote small-group and individual assignments using the internet and Canvas will be used to maximize flexibility for participants, while enhancing the value received from the program.

AY24-25 On-Line Courses

There are three on-line courses.  Each course is one week in the HGPHNL Certificate Program.  The curriculum consists of three separate courses taken in the order that follows. Descriptions and learning objectives for each course are provided below.

1. HGNL – Health Systems Strengthening (2.5 credits)
September 23 – 27, 2024

Rifat Atun, Professor of Global Health Systems

This course is designed to strengthen the role of nurse and midwife leaders in health systems, particularly in public health and primary care to achieve better health outcomes. It will cover approaches to analyzing health systems and their performance and explore how innovations in technologies, biomedicine, organizations, finance, and service delivery can be used to strengthen health systems. The course will help develop skills for health workforce strategy building for nurses and midwives, and for leadership and governance regarding strategic policy frameworks, oversight, regulations, and community engagement and development. Participants will work with key partners (e.g., mentors; ministers of health, finance, and education; and community health workers) to ensure excellence in developing the right skills and knowledge to strengthen health systems. The course will be delivered in nine three-hour sessions with pre- and post-course work. Learning objectives include the following:

  1. Describe the fundamentals of systems thinking
  2. Analyze major changes in context, such as demographic, epidemiological transitions, economic, socio-cultural and technological trends, that influence health systems and their performance
  3. Apply analytic frameworks to evaluate health system outcomes, outputs and functions and examine policies used to achieve improved performance in relation to equity, efficiency, effectiveness, and responsiveness to achieve defined objectives for health system outputs
  4. Critically analyze health systems, using systems thinking principles, for better health outcomes and progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals, universal health coverage, and the global health security agenda
  5. Analyze approaches that can be used to effectively integrate the latest technological and biomedical innovations in health systems
  6. Appraise different approaches used to design and sustain high value health systems
  7. Strengthen leadership capacity to formulate actions to effectively drive organizational innovation through distributed health systems

2. HGNL – Population Health Management (2.5 credits)
February 10 – 14, 2025

Stephanie Ferguson, HGNL Program Director, Professor of the Practice of Health Policy and Management, Department of Health Policy and Management

This course is designed to examine and develop strategies to improve health within and across populations. We will cover patterns of health determinants; population and primary health care management principles; decision science for public health nursing, policies, and interventions; and public health metrics and outcomes. The course will be delivered in nine three-hour sessions with pre- and post-course work expected.  Upon successful completion of this course, you should be able to:

  1. Identify determinants of population health that impact health outcomes in a community.
  2. Articulate indicators of quality in population health management and primary health care systems.
  3. Explain basic principles and tools of budget and resource management.
  4. Design a low-cost public health intervention using population health and primary health care management principles. 2
  5. Apply frameworks for collecting, analyzing, and using data to inform decisions, facilitate care coordination, and improve health outcomes of targeted populations within and outside the health system.
  6. Develop a plan to create partnerships at the national, regional and local public health levels to improve health services delivery.

3. HGNL – Reforming Policies and Regulations: Enhancing Access and Redesigning Health Systems (2.5 credits)
April 14 – 18, 2025

Stephanie Ferguson, HGNL Program Director, Professor of the Practice of Health Policy and Management, Department of Health Policy and Management

This course will build on the 7C’s model (Atun, R. & Moore, G., 2021), Primary Health Care Performance Initiative (PHCPI) Conceptual frameworks, theories, and deliverables from both HPM 564 and HPM 567. It will place the model theories and frameworks in the specific context of policies and regulations, and then use that positioning to extend the prior deliverables. In this course, students will gain additional necessary knowledge to plan, implement, and evaluate action- and learning-based regulatory and policy reform strategies and interventions. They will review global exemplars of approaches taken and implemented by diverse regulatory organizations and learn skills for developing models and making recommendations that will transform and strengthen their designated health systems and health profession regulatory models. Building on the applied project from HPM 564 and HPM 567, students will learn to prepare a policy brief and needed regulatory reform recommendations for their final applied project part 3. The course will be delivered in nine three-hour sessions with pre- and post-course work expected.  Upon successful completion of this course, students should be able to:

  1. Evaluate a country’s health care/ nursing regulatory organizational performance.
  2. Using the 7C’s model from the textbook Atun, R. & Moore, G. (chapter 8, 2021), identify key regulatory stakeholders to ensure that the stakeholder coalition previously designed now focuses on regulatory change to support health improvement and service redesign.
  3. Identify metrics to evaluate the success of changing the nursing/ midwifery practice act in a country.
  4. Apply communication best practices in creating impactful policy briefings, ministerial advocacy letters, and oral presentations that appropriately inform policymakers, key stakeholders, and lay audiences.

Leadership, Innovation, and Negotiation

The leadership, innovation, and negotiation theme will be woven into all three courses. The focus will be on how to lead effectively with public health in mind, especially during a crisis, and how to spur innovation through nurturing a culture of intrapreneurship.