ABSTRACT:
Creative Leadership for Innovation and Change: Deploying the Metanoia Model™ is a highly interactive session designed to build capacity for community-championed decision-making and collective leadership. This session offers an innovative, evidence-informed model for the 18th World Congress on Public Health, addressing the urgent need for creative leadership for innovation and change ensuring a world where health knows no borders. As nations, territories, states and localities around the world navigate the complexities of long-term divestment in public health infrastructure, the Metanoia Model™ is proposed as a creative leadership tool for organized change, catalyzing sustained action beyond the one-hour skill building session.1 The Metanoia Model™, inspired by an ancient term for a fundamental shift in mind, moves beyond traditional governance and administrative oversight. Instead, the model facilitates a pivot toward cross cultural and collaborative practices for sustainability, accountability and transparency in decisions which impact those most isolated from traditional decision-making processes. This model ensures local leaders, including individuals with lived experience, organizers, and clinicians are the primary architects of innovative human centered strategies that reduce preventable harms. This approach has been deployed to address multiple complex health challenges across the United States, beginning with the opioid crisis in Colorado in 2017.2 In 2023, the model was applied to support communities at greatest risk for preventable death and disease from COVID-19 focused on building equitable partnerships through community health workers in the Virgin Islands.3 From 2020 – 2025, community champions across the Rocky Mountain Region utilized the model to navigate policy, system, and environmental change related to preventing youth cannabis use.4,5,6 This 60-minute participatory skill building experience will facilitate a creative mindset shift for multi-sector collaboration across communities and systems impacting health. Delegates may expect to depart this session ready to translate skills into localized, high-impact interventions that traditional leadership models may overlook.