Leadership, Engagement, Advocacy and Diversity (L.E.A.D.) Program

Each and every day, we marry clinical excellence and meaningful innovation with a true spirit of equity, cultural competence and effective advocacy for members of our internal and external communities. Our goal is to become a national model for proactively fostering academic excellence, inclusion and a pediatric work force representative of the diverse population we serve.

With this in mind, we created the Office of Leadership, Engagement, Advocacy and Diversity (L.E.A.D.) at CHAM.

L.E.A.D. develops and implements programs that address crucial pipeline issues in order to deepen and broaden the pool of minority and disadvantaged students who can go on to thrive as physicians and scientists. Our efforts begin at the undergraduate level and continue on through the postgraduate years. We also support and train our junior and mid-level faculty to help them better serve our patients and become leaders in the health care arena. L.E.A.D.’s mandates include:

• To promote and support widespread and uncompromised diversity of gender, age, origin, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, religion, beliefs, appearance, abilities and contributions.
• To attract and maintain a diversified body of graduate and medical students, House Staff and faculty. We particularly focus on recruiting, retaining and advancing individuals currently underrepresented in medicine. In so doing, we strive to ensure that CHAM’s clinicians represent the demographics of our community and can provide superior, compassionate and culturally competent care to children from all walks of life.
• To foster a climate of respect for the uniqueness of each and every member of the CHAM community.
• To accept nothing less than the highest level of interdisciplinary teamwork and collaborative leadership.
• To build programs and systems that will help our students, residents and faculty steer their careers and successfully progress through the academic and professional ranks.