Exploring Public Health Leadership: Collaboration and Teamwork in Place Based Learning
Public health is a highly collaborative field, calling upon teamwork in topical exploration and research in a variety of areas. Being productive in these teams often involves communicating with the other team members and having trust in their strengths and ability to work as a member of the team. To find out more about collaboration and methods that make a team productive, I designed an evidence-based project to implement that included team activities for high school and college students in the EcoliteracySCHOOL program. I also collected feedback from each team to analyze the activities and used qualitative analysis on teams’ mentorship discussions to learn more about their connections. Through the completion of these activities, I saw just how important communication and trust were for teams to be successful. The implementation of these program plans made reaching the goal much more obtainable. Using these tools in a public health setting may increase collaboration and the potential for problem-solving.