This month I want to highlight the pioneering work GBSN has been doing in Nigeria. As we reported in the September Newsletter, the Federal Government ran a 6-month management training program for primary health care delivery officers from around the country. GBSN’s job is to assess the impact of the program, a very difficult task, given the many factors that influence outputs and outcomes. 

Nora Brown, our COO, worked with faculty from GBSN member schools Fuqua (Duke University) and Haas (University of California, Berkeley), and they have come up with provisional results, which show that the course enhanced the participants’ management capabilities. In a similar vein, Management Sciences for Health (www.msh.org) conducted a survey of Kenyan districts, which shows that those whose health managers had taken a leadership course outperformed others. Both surveys are very encouraging. 

As more such studies are undertaken around the developing world, it will become clearer how management training can save lives.