Background: To advance equity and to enhance leadership skills, self-advocates with intellectual/developmental disabilities are now part of the cohort of trainees in the University of North Carolina LEND, which means that they fully participate in the Interdisciplinary Leadership Development Program, a collaboration among programs in public health, social work, and LEND, which meets monthly.
Objective: Given this important new participation by self-advocates, this study analyzes the reflections of graduate students on the contributions of self-advocates to their leadership training.
Methods: At the conclusion of the program each year, graduate students respond to a questionnaire about how self-advocates influenced the content and interactions/discussions of the monthly workshops and are asked to provide specific examples to explain their perceptions. The 12 MCH leadership competencies were used to guide the coding of the comments for this qualitative, directed content analysis.
Results: Forty-six of 58 students (79.3%) from two consecutive cohorts responded for this cross-sectional study. Interactions with self-advocates prompted comments on 8 of the 12 leadership competencies, including interdisciplinary team building (29% of the comments); developing others through teaching and mentoring (22%); and self-reflection (18%).
Conclusions: The inclusion of self-advocates throughout an interdisciplinary leadership development program for graduate students in health affairs can strengthen MCH leadership competencies for all participants as they enter an increasingly interdisciplinary workforce.
Keywords: Interdisciplinary/interprofessional leadership; Self-advocate.
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