Mind the public health leadership gap: the opportunities and challenges of engaging high-profile individuals in the public health agenda.

Background: Public health leadership has been criticized as being ineffective. The public health profession is relatively small. Critics have argued that there is over-emphasis on technical aspects and insufficient use of the 'community as a source of public health actions'.

Training public health superheroes: five talents for public health leadership.

Background: Public health leaders have been criticized for their policy stances, relationships with governments and failure to train the next generation. New approaches to the identification and training of public health leaders may be required. To inform these, lessons can be drawn from public health 'superheroes'; public health leaders perceived to be the most admired and effective by their peers.

Leaders and emotional intelligence: a view from those who follow.

Abstract-Boyatzis and Goleman state that Emotional Intelligence (EI) "is an important predictor of success." In their book Primal Leadership, they refer to "the leadership competencies of emotional intelligence: how leaders handle themselves and their relationships." The leadership exercises reported here examined the practices of effective and ineffective leaders as identified by individuals who have worked under such leaders (ie, followers/subordinates).

Building an international public health academic partnership: the Alberta-Lithuania experience.

The schools of public health at the University of Alberta and the Lithuanian University of Health Sciences have developed a partnership committed to a variety of collaborations (e.g., faculty/student exchanges and joint projects).

The role of surgeons in identifying emerging technologies for health technology assessment.

Background: Health technology assessment (HTA) is a tool intended to help policy-makers decide which technologies to fund. However, given the proliferation of new technologies, it is not possible to undertake an HTA of each one before it becomes funded. Consequently, "horizon-scanning" processes have been developed to identify emerging technologies that are likely to have a substantial impact on clinical practice.