About Me

Serve as the technical lead for Cooper/Smith’s (www.coopersmith.org) health financing activities of Burkina Faso Data Use Partnership project funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Specifically, providing support to the Cooper/Smith Technical team on the following activities:

• Build the capacity of the government counterparts in health economics, data use, health information systems, and analytical methods
• Map the financial data flows of the Government of Burkina Faso and donors across administrative levels 
• Conduct a financial systems capacity assessment and develop a technical roadmap towards a dynamic health financing platform that provides more visibility on funding and resource allocation.

Provided direct technical assistance and strategic advice to ensure high quality program results and execution across MSH projects in health economics and health financing.

Regularly provided technical support to internal project teams in the specific area of technical expertise (e.g., health financing, public financial management, economic evaluation, costing, and partner coordination and training for program design and implementation, etc.), especially in francophone countries. Specifically,

• Served as the strategic lead and manager of health financing activities in support of MSH-led USAID’s Health Leadership Project (HLP) in Haiti and Accessible Continuum of Care and Essential Services Sustained (ACCESS) activities in Madagascar.
• Developed research protocol and data collection tool and managed consultants to conduct a total cost analysis of the public health supply chain, including financial sustainability analyses and option modeling of outsourcing/contracting and integration of logistic functions in support to the USAID’s Improved Market Partnership and Access to Commodities Together (IMPACT) project activities and deliverables
• In support to MSH team’s work on research commissioned by Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in Benin, collaborated with partners at the National Malaria Coordinating Program and University of Ghana to implement a cost-effectiveness study, comparing the costs and impacts of two seasonal malaria chemoprevention strategies in the northern region of Benin.
• Routinely assisted in strengthening and expanding MSH’s portfolio of health financing and health systems strengthening activities by supporting MHS’s existing project activities and new business development through positioning and proposal writing.

Developed and conducted health economics studies commissioned by CDC and the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices to guide making recommendations on vaccine policies, programs, and practices. Specifically,

• Conducted cost and cost-effectiveness analyses of prevention strategies and program activities, including literature searches and syntheses of cost-benefit/effectiveness studies and methods relevant to health economics research, program assessment activities, and vaccine preventable disease prevention strategies.
• Conducted assessments of health care service utilization and immunization of children, adults and elderly persons privately and publicly insured and enrolled in Medicare and Medicaid plans.
• Coordinated, communicated, and collaborated with other branches and units to assist with research project formulation, data management, data analysis, and study interpretation.

• Provided high quality consultancy services in the fields of horticulture and agribusiness. Clients included (1) Micro Macro International Inc. (MMI), an analytical laboratory based in Georgia (USA) and (2) Amya Agro Plus Ltd, a rural small value chain enterprise in Northern Ghana, engaged in cassava farming and processing the roots into food-derived products for the Ghana and Burkina Faso markets.

Embedded within the National Population Council (NPC) to provide technical support for implementing a £11.3 million United Kingdom Department for International Development (DFID), three-year Ghana Adolescent Reproductive Health (GHARH) project that reached over 205,000 adolescents and young people with adolescent sexual and reproductive health (ASRH) and family planning (FP) services and 460,000 people with behavioral change communication messages.

• Coordinated performance-based financing of 7 GHARH’s sub-grantee working in health facilities, school settings, and communities throughout 27 districts in the Brong Ahafo Region and 3 sub-district in the Kumasi Metropolitan Area in the Ashanti Region.
• Managed and supervised 4 project M&E advisors and external consultants to conduct 6 operations research studies, with findings and recommendations used to improve GHARH program implementation while contributing to the evidence based national ASRH policy and program designs.
• Provided significant contribution to 6 consultative population and health policy review, assessment and development processes: the National Adolescent Reproductive Health Policy (2016), the Revised National Policy (2016), the NPC New Strategic Plan 2016-2024, the national Costed Implementation plan (CIP) for Family Planning, the National Condom and Lubricant Strategy, and the National Behavioral Change Communication Strategy.

• Provided content knowledge, technical assistance, and consultation support to the Integrated Disease Surveillance and Response (IDSR) program at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for the development of an electronic surveillance (eSurveillance) tool to map and collect public health and veterinary health surveillance data and information flow across health system levels and data sources.
• Provided content knowledge and expertise in plant nutrition and agricultural economics to Micro Macro International, Inc. on developing and implementing effective laboratory operation strategies designed to increase revenues while providing quality analytical services and products to its clients.

Managed and implemented activities to cost HIV/AIDS prevention programs targeting the general population in support to the USAID-funded Health Policy Initiative, Costing Task Order.

• Led a cost study on behavioral change communication (BCC) programs implemented by eight PEPFAR supported non-governmental organizations (NGO) and government agencies in Namibia. The findings and recommendations (available at: https://pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/pnaec291.pdf) inform accurate budgeting and programming for effective and efficient delivery of BBC services for HIV prevention in Namibia and other countries with generalized HIV epidemic.
• Supported costing HTC activities in Botswana and family planning services in Ghana. 

• Managed and coordinated laboratory chemical analyses of plant, soil and water samples and food-related products to assist agricultural growers improve the yield and quality of their agronomic and horticultural crops, as well as the drinking and irrigation water.
• Conducted scientific research to identify factors causing crop damage, as well as fine-tuning the effectiveness and marketability of new plant growth media/soil. Clients utilizing the analytical services and technical assistance of MMI include US government agencies, corporations, companies, research and educational institutions, and individual growers.

• Managed and coordinated laboratory chemical analyses of plant, soil and water samples and food-related products to assist agricultural growers improve the yield and quality of their agronomic and horticultural crops, as well as the drinking and irrigation water.
• Conducted scientific research to identify factors causing crop damage, as well as fine-tuning the effectiveness and marketability of new plant growth media/soil. Clients utilizing the analytical services and technical assistance of MMI include US government agencies, corporations, companies, research and educational institutions, and individual growers.

• Managed and coordinated laboratory chemical analyses of plant, soil and water samples and food-related products to assist agricultural growers improve the yield and quality of their agronomic and horticultural crops, as well as the drinking and irrigation water.
• Conducted scientific research to identify factors causing crop damage, as well as fine-tuning the effectiveness and marketability of new plant growth media/soil. Clients utilizing the analytical services and technical assistance of MMI include US government agencies, corporations, companies, research and educational institutions, and individual growers.

• Managed all chemical laboratory analytical activities encompassing nutritional analysis, pathology, and pesticide analysis and research to identify plant growth problems and correct agronomic and horticultural crop growth needs and drinking water quality.
• Conducting research for clients requiring independent evaluation of products being introduced into the market; maintained an electronic data tracking and nutritional history database of analytical results.

• Coordinated and managed multi-disciplinary and inter-agency collaborative research studies that focused on developing technologies for increasing agricultural productivity while conserving the natural resource base.
• Key themes addressed include crop residue and water management, improving nutrient use efficiency and synergy between organic and inorganic nutrients, crop-livestock integration with explicit focus on alternative uses of animal manure and crop residues as animal-feed, household fuel source, or soil amendment.

• As research coordinator in the Agronomy Department, designed and implemented research on conservation tillage and sustainable agriculture to develop integrated crop residue and legume cover crop management technologies for clean water, animal feeds, and soil amendments.