The Republic of Marshall Islands’ Dynamic Approach to Strategic Planning
The Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI) Ministry of Health and Human Services successfully held its first Tole Mour Conference in July 2023. In this short video, RMI’s Acting Secretary of Health and Human Services Francyne Wase-Jacklick shares how PHIG funding is strengthening partnerships and aligning leadership on the ministry’s strategic priorities.
Video Transcript
Edited for clarity.
FRANCYNE WASE-JACKLICK: The Ministry of Health leadership team held its first leadership conference and catered it around Tole Mour. It’s a term used in the Marshall Islands and means “gift of health.”
ON-SCREEN TEXT: The Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI) Ministry of Health and Human Services successfully held its first Tole Mour Conference in July 2023. During the convening, the ministry’s leadership team and bureau directors conducted sessions to prioritize goals, identify ministry leaders as champions for specific objectives, and conduct an inventory of existing and potential technical assistance resources.
WASE-JACKLICK: The PHIG grant was the catalyst in making this happen. We want to meet the grant’s objectives but also tie in the foundational capacities of the ministry, which a lot of the reforms in the strategic plan are built upon.
The strategic plan is based on transformational health and how we want to bring reforms and changes to the Ministry of Health. Throughout the conference, the presence of the leadership team, the bureau chiefs or leads, ministries, senior management, and program directors showed a culture of belonging and embraced the idea of inclusion and equity. It brought together many leaders with different perspectives, ideas, and opinions.
It’s important to emphasize that it’s a leadership conference, and everyone is coming together to review and look into the healthcare reforms we have endorsed—how this can also bring about achievement together.
Given that we have a lot of partners, it was also important for the leaders and management to understand and know who those partners are. This sets precedents for the next eight years, and we hope that this will enable us and allow champions to share progress and performance. Next year, we’re going to do the same thing. We’re going to meet again every year to talk about our performance, our progress on the strategies, and the key issues affecting the implementation or delaying some of the work we want to do.
I hope our experience in leadership meetings, especially this one, will allow others to see it as a best practice and apply it in their respective jurisdictions. It really revitalized relationships and partnerships and built synergies across different programs. So, I hope this will bring change and more cohesion as a ministry.