Placement: Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
Co-Mentors: David Williams, PhD, Florence Sprague Norman and Laura Smart Norman Professor of Public Health; Chair of the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
Valerie Ward, MD, MPH, Senior Vice President and Chief Equity and Inclusion Officer; Director, Sandra L. Fenwick Institute for Pediatric Health Equity and Inclusion, Boston Children’s Hospital
Project: Embedding Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Child Health Clinical Leadership Development Programmes
Mo Akindolie, MBBS, FRCPCH, is a 2024–25 U.K. Harkness Fellow in Health Care Policy and Practice. She is a Consultant Ambulatory Paediatrician at King’s College Hospital with more than 20 years’ experience in the NHS. Akindolie is an experienced leader of transformational change and improvement in pediatric ambulatory services. She is an ally of, and passionate advocate for, equity, diversity, and inclusion, particularly within health care. She holds the position of Assistant Registrar within the Senior Leadership Team at the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (RCPCH), a role that entails overseeing areas of the RCPCH’s governance and ethical framework alongside its relations with external bodies, including the GMC, NHSE, and BMA.
Akindolie is a Trustee for the Armitage Foundation, a charity that works to shape a future NHS workforce from all walks of life that reflects the diversity of society. In memory of her father, Dr. Frank Olufemi Akindolie, she cofounded the Akindolie Medical Scholarship, a privately funded bursary and leadership mentoring initiative aimed at supporting future doctors from minority ethnic backgrounds.
Project overview: The outcomes of our health care systems are built on the foundational quality of our clinical leaders. Leaders in child health care are uniquely placed to have a definitive role in shaping the health of our future world, as their work impacts the entire life course. Health equity is a priority, and a diverse workforce, specifically pertaining to clinical leaders, is a prerequisite to achieving it. In pursuit of our ambitious long-term aims of achieving health equity, it will therefore be paramount to embed diversity, equity, and inclusion in child health clinical leadership development, and the time to act is now. This research will evaluate currently available programs for clinical leadership development in child health in the U.S., with a perspective focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion. The methodology will entail a comprehensive literature review, a survey evaluation of current programs, and a qualitative study involving interviews of child health clinical leaders. Stakeholders will include high-performing children’s hospitals in the United States and professional pediatric bodies, including the American Association of Pediatrics.