Leadership in Global Health

Leadership in Global Health outlines the essential leadership principles that transform promising health interventions into global movements, offering a timely and compelling blueprint for leaders seeking to drive lasting, scalable change. Grounded in decades of lessons from global health successes and failures, and illustrated through deeply analyzed, real-world case studies, the book reveals what happens when leadership meets coordinated action. These stories- from the eradication of smallpox and the large-scale delivery of malaria bed nets to the community-based innovations of Ethiopia's Health Extension Program and the lightning-fast COVID-19 vaccine rollout-show how leadership in global health is not one-size-fits-all, but rather dynamic, responsive, and deeply human. In an era where complex health challenges range from emerging pandemics to enduring inequities, the book centers the role of leadership-strategic, adaptive, and collaborative-as the critical engine for scaling health interventions, offering readers not only compelling narratives from the field, but also practical tools and reflections which give the book a forward-looking focus. Building to offer a roadmap for developing the next generation of global health leaders equipped to thrive in multi-sectoral, rapidly evolving environments, it will be essential reading for students, scholars, and practitioners across Global Health, Public Health, Leadership and Development Studies.

Obidimma Ezezika is a global health scholar and faculty member at Western University in Canada, where he directs the Global Health & Innovation Lab. His work examines how leadership, institutions, and policy shape the ability of health innovations to scale and achieve population-level impact. He works with governments and global health institutions across Africa and beyond and has been recognized among Africa's leading scientific voices for contributions to global health research.

Introduction Scale as a Leadership Problem Part I: Foundations of Scale 1. The Architecture of Scale 2. Leadership as System-Level Enabler 3. Aligning Systems for Sustainable Scale Part II: Leadership Under Constraint 4. Aligning Without Control: Eradicating Smallpox 5. Sustaining Scale Under Implementation Strain: Malaria Bed Nets 6. Adapting Under Constraint: Epidemic Meningitis Elimination 7. Orchestrating Decentralized Scale: Ethiopia's Health Extension Program 8. Governing Speed and Legitimacy: COVID-19 Vaccine Rollout Part III: Governing for Durable Scale 9. Aligning Stakeholders and Governing Coalitions 10. Financing and Resource Mobilization for Scale 11. Innovation, Adaptation, and Continuous Learning Part IV: The Discipline of Leadership 12. Judgment at Scale: The Discipline of Decision Under Constraint 13. Leading Without Command: Governing Distributed Power 14. Designing the Leadership Ecosystem for Scale