Leadership
The retirement of health center leaders in numerous Texas community health centers is expected over the next five years. Additionally, increasing turnover rates among key health center staff have created a sense of urgency in addressing the "leadership void" that is becoming more common throughout health centers. In the last 15 years, there have been vacancies in at least one of the key leadership positions in each of the community health centers in the state. To address this issue, in 2001, the Texas Association of Community Health Centers (TACHC) was funded by the Bureau of Primary Health Care (BPHC) to implement a leadership program to work with community health centers in the state. The major goals of the project were to improve overall staff satisfaction and lessen turnover by providing training, technical assistance and mentoring to the leadership of community health centers. This pilot program was highly successful and resulted in BPHC's continued support of the TACHC Executive Leadership Initiative. Over the past 10 years, 37 centers have participated in the program. The project is designed to improve overall staff satisfaction, lesson staff turnover and create smoother transitions when planned and unplanned staff turnover occurs through the development of succession plans for key health center positions.
