The Global Laboratory Leadership Programme (GLLP) is a unique workforce development initiative with the goal to foster and mentor current and emerging laboratory leaders to build, strengthen, and sustain national laboratory systems.
The initiative is led by six international Partners (the Association of Public Health Laboratories (APHL), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) and the World Health Organization (WHO)) committed to their mission to provide laboratory professionals with the tools necessary to develop their laboratory leadership competencies and advance effective national laboratory systems for improved health security using a One Health approach.
In March 2019 the Partners published the first product, the Laboratory Leadership Competency Framework, which outlined the essential competencies needed for laboratory leaders to build sustainable national laboratory systems that improve disease detection, control and prevention efforts in health systems around the world. Now, in the pivotal next stage of the programme's development, the Partners have released the GLLP Learning Package - a suite of tools, information and resources to plan, develop, implement and evaluate a laboratory leadership programme in any region, country, or educational institution in the world.
The GLLP Learning Package, hosted on the WHO Health Security Learning Platform (HSLP), includes a GLLP Planning and Implementation Guide, Mentorship Guide and virtual and in-person course materials including PowerPoint presentations, and instructor and participant guides. The materials are organized into four primary sections - Introduction, Laboratory Management, Laboratory Leadership and Laboratory Systems - with more than 200 contact hours worth of content. The programme is flexible in length, format, and content and may be adapted to meet country-specific workforce needs. More than 140 contributors from the Human Health, Animal Health and Environmental Health sectors participated in the development, revision or review of the Package.
Access to the full set of course materials will initially be restricted, as the Partners continue to refine the Learning Package based on feedback, before releasing for public use. Upon motivated request, access to the modules can be granted to organizations planning to use the GLLP materials for a training/learning activity. For more information on such requests, please contact the programme developers at gllp@who.int