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Decoding STICH: Faculty Share Their Personal Experiences

Nepurko Keiwua

Content Writer at School of Nursing and Midwifery, Aga Khan University

My experience at STICH - Dr Siaity-Pallangyo

Why did you choose to participate in STICH and what were your expectations beforehand?

My interest started right from the title of the course “Strategic Innovation for Community Health” as I believed that I would grasp knowledge and skills pertinent to fulfilling my desire of working with the community to solve several health problems. Colleagues who participated in the similar course in previous years also stimulated my enthusiasm to participate in the programme. Encouragement by Prof. Sharon Brownie, Dean, AKU-SONAM EA also motivated my participation.

As you recently completed your PhD, how was the teaching and learning experience in this programme different from your four year PhD education in Sweden?

The programme is taking the massive knowledge acquired in the course of pursuing the PhD and contextualising it into life realities and using simple techniques to enable innovation success. The STICH programme insists that successful innovators usually take smart and calculated risks to effect change. During PhD studies, I thought more on application of various theoretical frameworks in community interventions. By merging the knowledge from the two programmes, my scope on successes and failures of programmes designed to address community problems is now broad. 

You’ve already experienced leadership before as Academic Head in Tanzania. How would you have carried out the role differently had you participated in STICH earlier?

The main focus would be in driving the innovations and the application of various models to facilitate both my personal and colleagues’ way of doing things and thinking differently. This course would have helped me to understand people I led, how they make decisions and how to influence better decision-making. Learning from this programme about “design thinking in service innovation” would have enabled me do better in designing the programmes and making them attractive to potential students using better approach/performance in implementation. We might have done much better in the way we understood health and wellness and worked more to prevent failures in some innovative models. With this course, the leader develops confidence in leading change in organisations. I would in particular enjoy utilising the change management model to lead any kind of strategic innovations and improving the organisations performance.

How will your participation in STICH impact your career going forward? Did the course meet your expectations? Please qualify your answer, whether yes or no?

Yes, this course met my expectations. Teaching in institutions of higher learning means that we also go beyond classroom sessions to linking theory into real practice in health systems. It requires critical thinking in development of new knowledge and skills for solving complex issues. There are multiple community challenges that require innovative and creative minds, and through my participation in this course, I see myself as an innovator of several programmes with impact to the organisation and community at large. This course positions a participant in order to better bridge the theory practice gap through more interrogation of status quo, synthesing acquired knowledge and incorporating it during programme implementation.

Please share any memorable moments/ lessons that came up for you during the course that you feel will serve to inspire future participants of course from AKU-SONAM. This may include anecdotes or even key learnings that you will remember for the rest of your career.

Experience change primer (simulation) which was about managing organisational change. The change management principles and skills gained through assignments that required team-work will be remembered and this session was a very useful and memorable exercise. We (teams) were consultants to GlobalTech, an organisation with several employees and management teams dealing with “mobile sensing technology” with the military as a potential client. GlobalTech had tried, to expand their product to the global market, but failed. We were eight teams assigned to work as consultants on the same assignment as a competition. We engaged in interviewing several managers/team in the organization to explore the problems and decide how to go about providing a solution. As a team, we had to decide among several provided list of actions to facilitate change. Through interviews, critical thinking and applying change theory, I remember how the use of this model (simulation) triggered a feeling of being a real consultant. Our group scored highest and we were announced winners!! This adds to my memory of teamwork spirit presented by our group, which must have contributed to the success. 

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My experience at STICH – Associate Professor Tumbwene Mwansisya

Why did you participate in the STICH programme and what were your expectations before you joined?

One of the reason for applying to the STICH programme was to gain knowledge and skills on leadership and management. I expected to gain an understanding on innovation skills as applied to leadership and management in health sector and to communicate effectively with my colleagues, students, patients to reach the target goals, among other expectations.

What are your most memorable lessons as regards to what you learnt in the programme?

The generation of ideas and presentation, the seven steps model towards strategic management change and marketing of the innovative services and products.

How are these relevant to your career progression as a mental health champion in the nursing sector in Tanzania and East Africa as a whole?

These lessons enriched me with necessary skills towards innovative teaching in both clinical and theory in Psychiatry and Mental Health. It also helps me to be more efficient in communicating any changes in the course and getting the teams in Tanzania and East Africa towards innovative and creative ways of developing, reviewing, and delivering the mental health courses. One of the strategies that came to mind as an innovative plan for teaching mental health course is to develop short role-plays for students to take part in.

How do you believe that participating in STICH will enable you to participate in reimagining health care and innovate teaching and research while at AKU-SONAM?

This course provided me with the thinking framework that has a great impact in all dimensions of my life. It has created an innovative thinking spirit that enables more innovative in my provision of health care and teaching students. The training has provided me with a tool that helps me to guide students to become more innovative in the selection of their research topics, development of their research proposals, report writing and marketing their work through publications.

Please share memorable moments you had with fellow course participants, in summary and to inspire future participants from AKU-SONAM

It was so nice to meet with a team of talented people from different countries and working together as a team. When we worked as a team towards developing strategies for adolescent corner and we came up with a role play that was so exciting as we were able to map all the challenges that adolescent face when seeking for their health care. This taught me the roles of working in a team and how to learn from others.

Previously, I’ve asked about your expectations. Were these met once you’ve undergone the programme? Please qualify your answer, whether yes or no.

Yes. My expectations were met and the course even exceeded my expectations. As I highlighted above, I learnt a lot on how to be innovative. The training created a thinking framework that touches all the aspects of my life.

Where are they now?

I also managed to speak to past AKU-SONAM participants in the programme. AKU-SONAM Kenya’s Ms Isabel Kambo was part of the STICH 2016 cohort while it was still in Abu Dhabi. Enrollment in STICH is by nomination and I asked Ms Kambo why she chose to accept the nomination. She responded by saying that she wanted to learn from others and exchange views on what is happening in community health across the globe. Ms Kambo was also a one-time project manager at AKU-SONAM and is currently enrolled as a PhD candidate at the University of Salford, UK. According to Ms. Kambo, “I learned about the power of design thinking. Therefore, I am now in the stage of research for my PhD thesis, to explore and understand health and wellbeing in the workplace environment. By so doing I hope to find the unlimited options beyond current preventive health care strategies that can be translated to sustainable and contextualised workplace health promotion designs /solutions.”

When I asked her if she would recommend the programme, she responded in the affirmative and added, “The program is very interactive and engaging and offers many new experiences. It is not the typical leadership programmes we all have attended before.”

Dr Eunice Ndirangu is the Academic Head at AKU-SONAM Kenya participated in STICH in 2017 with her Tanzanian counterpart, Dr Columba Mbekenga. Dr Ndirangu had this to say about her experience with the programme, “The course was fantastic and I learned how to be creative in dealing with leadership challenges. I was especially impressed by the case studies from other industries that facilitators used to teach. These really encouraged me as I am able to carry over the wins from those industrial cases as I aim to model similar success stories here at AKU-SONAM.” Again, when I asked her if she would recommend for anyone to participate, Dr Ndirangu replied with a hearty yes.

 

Thank you to the School of Nursing and Midwifery (SONAM) at Aga Khan University (AKU) for sharing these participant stories, and to Johnson & Johnson Global Community Impact for their support.

Interested in INSEAD's Strategic Innovation for Community Health programme? Have a look at the Strategic Innovation for Community Health web page.

Strategic Innovation for Community Health is the result of the Trust’s longstanding partnership with INSEAD to provide management education for healthcare professionals. INSEAD is a Flagship Partner within the Trust’s 2020 strategy and a key component of the Trust’s goal to advance knowledge and innovation in seeking to transform health care systems. The Trust works across the Europe, Middle East and Africa region in making a difference in human health through multiple social impact interventions. Currently within the Trust’s partnership portfolio there are over 70 active programmes run with partner organisations. For more information about the Trust and its activities, please visit www.jjcct.org