This comprehensive textbook captures best international practice and is focused on the practical needs of leaders in health and social care.  The text includes chapters that address evolving and innovative practices in leadership, ethics, leading people and human resource management, cultural safety for First Nations peoples,  innovation, digital health, finance and resource management, systems thinking, change, evaluation and safety and quality. As an open educational resource, leaders, managers, students, policymakers and all readers interested in improving healthcare systems can access the book.  The choice to publish on an open platform demonstrates our commitment to building a strong, transparent, and connected community of practice for health service leaders across many disciplines and across the world.  We hope this pragmatic and contemporary textbook will reach a broad audience with an interest in strengthening the discipline of health service leadership and building fit-for-purpose healthcare systems that meet the needs of the diverse communities we serve.  To achieve this we want the text to be free and widely available.  To achieve the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals, health and quality education are key and this open educational resource (OER) is available for all to use to guide their practice and the strengthening of health and social care systems.

Our world faces many challenges and climate change poses an existential crisis and will impact the health of populations (IPCC, 2023).  Leadership now more than ever is needed to make ethical decisions to reduce pollution, and waste and address ongoing inequities and access to health and social care services.  Collaboration, partnerships and working together to achieve outcomes is essential.  The writing of this text is evidence of collaboration to achieve a common goal.  From a drawing on an office white-board to the bringing together of academics and health leaders from across Australia, with a common vision to publish an open educational resource text book, as Editors we are grateful to the team of writers, Library and Editing professionals (who have never been in the same room together) to deliver the concept.

The structure of the chapters are similar and outline the importance of the topic, embed activities and reflections and provide insights, the latest evidence and key learnings on leadership, people in health and systems and governance.   Please use the text in ways that best support you and your teams of health and social care professionals. For those studying health leadership and management, we believe that all chapters will be of interest, others may read those that are of interest and relevance to them. We welcome feedback on the text and please email sheree.lloyd@utas.edu.au with suggestions and comments.

Sheree Lloyd, Richard Olley and Eleanor Milligan (Editors)

References

PCC 2023. Summary for Policymakers. In: Climate Change 2023: Synthesis Report. Contribution of Working Groups I, II and III to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change In: LEE, H. & ROMERO, J. (eds.).