Public Health Leadership Theory In Immunization Campaigns: a look at the Transactional and Transformational Leaderships Styles

Abstract

The need for public health practitioners to acquire the attributes and the necessary skills that makes up an effective leader should not be over emphasized especially now that the challenges in the public health sector is more than ever before with emerging and re-emerging diseases. We all know that public health leadership aims to protect health of the public, promote good health at a population level, prevent diseases, and to reduce health inequity and inequality.

There is no doubt that public health leaders require certain traits and skills to enable them build infrastructure that would prevent diseases, serve people irrespective of their backgrounds, ensure population based approach on public health issues, create strategies aimed at preventing diseases, promoting good health, adhere to timeliness and completeness of data collection, and have community-wide health strategies. The role of transactional and transformational leadership styles in immunization campaigns aims to give the desired leadership for policy makers to understand problems associated with immunization campaigns, so that the end result would be to create awareness on the importance of immunization among parents and other stakeholders, to enlighten the public on benefits associated with eligible children getting vaccinated with the vaccines. It is expected that once the right leadership is at the helm of affairs, social change would be promoted within communities to improve on the country’s the health indicators.

Keywords: Public Health, Leadership Theory, Immunization Campaigns, Transactional Leadership and Transformational Leadership, Vaccine Preventable Diseases