Assessor is a Portuguese term meaning “advisor” used by HAI to refer to HAI technical advisors working directly within national ministry of health offices, providing technical expertise and direct support to ministry officials.

Dating back to our first years in Mozambique, one strategy that HAI used to build technical capacity within the National Health Systems is through the placement of HAI technical advisors, or assessors.  Assessors were embedded in the structure of the public sector health system responding to and collaborating daily with their MOH counterparts.

HAI’s most recent assessor, Dr. James Cowan (pictured above), served in Mozambique’s National TB Program (NTP).  As an embedded senior TB, TB/HIV and DR-TB advisor, Dr. Cowan worked closely with NTP colleagues across a range of issues including strategic leadership, strengthening M&E platforms, and developing a nascent Quality Improvement Program. Dr. Cowan helped develop and implement a national MDR-TB control program strategy, including scale up of MDR diagnosis and treatment services, expanstion of training and support on research efforts aimed at improving MDR-TB care, and support for the development of an MDR-TB monitoring and evaluation framework and database to better understand the burden of MDR-TB in Mozambique.

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