Leadership Education in Neurodevelopmental and related Disabilities (LEND) programs are funded by the Maternal and Child Health (MCH) Bureau to “improve the health of children who have, or are at risk for, neurodevelopmental or related disabilities” (HRSA 2010). A common feature of all LEND programs is the enrollment of trainees who are university students, typically at the graduate level of study. At present, 52 LEND programs across 44 states compose the interdisciplinary training network for future leaders who will work with and on behalf of children with disabilities and their families across a variety of clinical, research, teaching, and policy/advocacy settings. Faculty from 14 academic disciplines, including audiology, genetic counseling, health administration, medicine, nursing, nutrition, occupational and physical therapy, pediatric dentistry, psychology, public health, social work, special education, and speech-language pathology prepare these trainees.

MCH Leadership Competencies and Measuring Leadership Development

Historically, leadership development has been encouraged across MCH interdisciplinary training programs. Prior to 2000, however, there was no uniform definition or metric to measure leadership development (Richardson et al. 1988). A shift to a competency-based curriculum with a focus on self-development occurred to help ensure that professionals-in-training would develop the necessary leadership skills to meet the growing demands of the MCH population (Maternal and Child Health Bureau 2009). By 2004, the MCHB, in collaboration with MCH training programs and practitioners, had codified important elements of leadership development by publishing the MCH Leadership Competencies (Mouradian and Huebner 2007) and required that all MCH-funded training programs report on a leadership development performance measure. The MCH Leadership Competencies (currently version 3.0) were developed through an iterative process of expert consensus (Reed 2009) by the MCH Leadership Competencies Workgroup and released by MCHB’s Division of Research, Training, and Education in 2009. The workgroup asserted that leadership in MCH is both contextual and developmental in nature and requires the acquisition of specific content knowledge, skill areas, personal characteristics, and values (Maternal and Child Health Bureau 2009).