WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT

AMCHP’s Workforce Development and Capacity Building team:

• Aims to always honor the diverse perspectives and priorities of MCH populations and the communities in which they live through listening, authentic partnership, and action.
• Believes that leadership is a practice, not a status or associated with a specific title..
• Strives to develop individuals in the context of systems change and change systems by investing in individuals, i.e. we apply a “workforce lens” across AMCHP efforts and help others do the same.
• Recognizes that opportunities to build knowledge and skills (at the individual level) and capacity (at the systems level) have not always been afforded equitably.
• Practices empathy without compromising accountability, acknowledging each individual’s unique and important role in the broader pursuit of justice.

AMCHP is committed to cultivating interest in the broad array of MCH careers and building the knowledge, skills, and abilities of practicing professionals to address current and future challenges – all while experiencing desired leadership growth and fulfillment in the context of this critical work. Our programs use adult learning principles to guide individual and small group training, facilitate mentorship connections, and offer hands-on experiences to put values driven leadership into practice across MCH domains and settings. These are deep, significant investments in people with demonstrated ability to contribute and immense potential to drive sustainable change in their respective jurisdictions.

AMCHP designs and implements initiatives aimed at providing state/territory MCH programs (often in collaboration with agency and community partners) with tools and technical assistance to address major priorities that have been identified through their five-year needs assessment and other information gathering processes. We run action learning collaboratives, provide multiple forms of coaching, and leverage expertise in change management that can be applied across topics. Capturing lessons learned from participating jurisdictions helps extend the benefit of these investments, with AMCHP well positioned as a membership association to support replication and/or scaling up of practices.

In addition to programming, AMCHP creates and strategically disseminates products to meet the real-time needs of MCH professionals, especially but not exclusively those working in (or in close partnership with) state/territory health departments. This often involves aggregating and repackaging existing resources for different workforce audiences and purposes. We also regularly analyze multiple sources of data to identify and report on MCH workforce strengths, needs, and trends.