Young Physician Leaders (YPL)

Effective healthcare institutions need effective leaders. The issue of developing leadership qualities among health professionals, however, is often neglected, with many young professions having to learn their leadership skills almost by trial and error as they are handed positions of responsibility. Although incorporating leadership training programmes into the medical curriculum is lately gaining in importance, in practice too few countries are actually providing such training (See, for example: Health Professionals for a new century: transforming education to strengthen health systems in an interdependent world). To contribute to building capacity in this area, IAMP launched its Young Physician Leaders (YPL) programme in 2011 in partnership with the World Health Summit (WHS) and the M8 Alliance of Academic Health Centres and Medical Universities. This inaugural programme was held at the Berlin Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities (BBAW), on 19 October, in conjunction with the 2011 World Health Summit (Berlin, Germany, 23-26 October 2011). Subsequent sessions have been held in 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2015. In addition, a regional event was organized at the Regional WHS in Singapore in 2013 and a 5th year reunion is planned for may 2016. To date, IAMP has trained 108 such YPL, all of whom are top young professionals, under the age of 40, who were nominated by their national academies.