Claudia S.P. Fernandez

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Claudia Fernandez served as the Co-Director and Co-Principal Investigator of the Clinical Scholars program from its inception in 2015 through the project closure in 2023. She serves as the Director of Executive Leadership Development for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a Maternal and Child Health professor at the Gillings School of Global Public Health, the top-ranked public school of public health in the United States. Dr. Fernandez is a licensed and Registered Dietitian, and as such has a particular interest in leadership in healthcare systems and high-performing healthcare and public health teams. For more than 20 years, she has directed leadership development programs for the US public university system and women’s healthcare physicians globally. Dr. Fernandez has published numerous articles about the effectiveness of leadership training and subsequent impacts on systems. She earned her doctorate in public health leadership and health policy from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Claudia S.P. Fernandez

2books edited

30chapters authored

Latest work with IntechOpen by Claudia S.P. Fernandez

This book is full of inspiration. Equity-centered leadership training is a powerful tool to address pressing health challenges in local communities. The Clinical Scholars program tackled challenging health issues across the U.S. by fostering collaboration between healthcare experts and their communities. Passionate and determined interprofessional healthcare teams received in-depth training to innovate and magnify their impact despite both entrenched and emerging obstacles. Ultimately, the program touched nearly one million lives and generated significant funding and partnerships to benefit local communities. This book details how Clinical Scholars’ training approach enabled teams to achieve the impossible: successful, sustainable, and scalable solutions to “Wicked Problems” in the U.S. Thirteen case examples illustrate how small interprofessional healthcare teams employed sophisticated equity-centered leadership skills to transform their communities, offering replicable solutions nationwide.

Go to the book