Open Positions – Sangath

Apply by 31st Aug / 6th Sep 23

Sangath (www.sangath.in) is a non-governmental, not-for-profit organisation committed to improving health across the life span by empowering existing community resources to provide appropriate physical, psychological and social therapies. Its primary focus areas include child development, adolescent and youth health, and adult health and addictions research.

1. Research Assistant (6 positions)

Sangath seeks to appoint Research Assistants who will be based at Bhopal hub for the OptimiseD project.

About the Project: The goal of project is to see if we can enhance treatment outcomes for patients with moderate to severe depression by personalizing allocation to one of the two treatments; additionally, we aim to identify those patients who are unlikely to respond to either treatment and should be referred to specialist care.

To achieve this, we will use machine learningto develop a precision treatment rule (PTR) based on a wide range of baseline moderators whichare feasible to assess in routine care settings. Our primary hypothesis is that those patients randomized by chance to their optimal intervention as indicated by the PTR will be more likely to remit and recover than those who are not. Moreover, we hypothesize that using our PTR to select the optimal treatment for each individual patient will prove to be more cost-effective than leaving things to chance. We also plan to explore secondary questions, such as whether we can enhance our mediation tests by including the PTR in interactions with our purported mediators (moderated mediation). Further, we plan to explore whether we can enhance the prescriptive utility of our PTR via genotyping our sample and calculating polygenic risk scores based on very large sample Genome-Wide Association studies.

If you are passionate and looking for an opportunity to work with a dynamic team on research in mental health involving health systems, working with an international set of collaborators, delving into data science as well as machine learning, and using implementation research tools, send in your application.

This project is funded by the US National Institute of Mental Health, with collaborators from leading organizations including Harvard University, Vanderbilt University, the Broad Institute,AIIMS Bhopal.

Job profile:

Job Description

• Travel to the health facilities in Bhopal district for study participant recruitment and research study data collection.
• Involvement in project activity planning, implementation, and coordination with the PHC staff.
• Participate in regular project meetings and documentation activities as per the proposed project scope.
• Providing support to projects implementation, guaranteeing quality, efficiency, and effectiveness.
• Assist and participate in other Sangath activities.
• Execute any other relevant duties assigned by the Project Coordinator.

Essential Candidate requirements

• Bachelor’s/Master’s degree in Public Health; Social Work; Psychology or related fields/discipline
• Fluency in Hindi and English
• Ability to drive a two-wheeler and a driving license
• Prior experience of working on a research project and similar role for a minimum of 1-2 years
• Good computing (MS Office), organisational and communication skills

Desirable criteria

• Experience of working with multi-disciplinary teams.
• Experience in qualitative and quantitative data collection.
• Ability to work effectively both independently and as part of a team.
• Ability to work on tight deadlines.

Remuneration and contractual duration

Salary offered will be commensurate based on the education, work experience and as per applicable Sangath policy. The initial appointment will be made for six months’ probation from the date of joining, with renewal up to one year based on a performance review.

Last Date and address for applications

How to apply: Please apply through the google form https://bit.ly/OptimiseDRA

Full applications must include a detailed CV and cover letter along with the details of two references by 6 th September 2023, 5:00 pm IST. (Immediate hiring)

If you have any questions, you may write to anuja.lahiri@sangath.in & shagun.gupta@sangath.in

Short-listed candidates will be invited for a telephone, virtual or in-person interview.

*Incomplete applications will not be considered.

2. ADM cum Assistant Research Coordinator

Job Location: Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, India

Positions: Full time

Project: Improving Outcomes in Depression in Primary Care in a Low Resource Setting

Duration: The position will be hired on an annual basis with renewal depending on continued funding and satisfactory performance.

Working Days: Monday to Friday (9:30 am to 5:30 pm)

Reporting: Research Coordinator

Sangath seeks to appoint Assistant Research Coordinator who will be based at Bhopal hub for the OptimizeD project.

About the Project: The goal of project is to see if we can enhance treatment outcomes for patients with moderate to severe depression by personalizing allocation to one of the two treatments; additionally, we aim to identify those patients who are unlikely to respond to either treatment and should be referred to specialist care.

To achieve this, we will use machine learningto develop a precision treatment rule (PTR) based on a wide range of baseline moderators whichare feasible to assess in routine care settings. Our primary hypothesis is that those patients randomized by chance to their optimal intervention as indicated by the PTR will be more likely to remit and recover than those who are not. Moreover, we hypothesize that using our PTR to select the optimal treatment for each individual patient will prove to be more cost-effective than leaving things to chance. We also plan to explore secondary questions, such as whether we can enhance our mediation tests by including the PTR in interactions with our purported mediators (moderated mediation). Further, we plan to explore whether we can enhance the prescriptive utility of our PTR via genotyping our sample and calculating polygenic risk scores based on very large sample Genome-Wide Association studies.

If you are passionate and looking for an opportunity to work with a dynamic team on research in mental health involving health systems, working with an international set of collaborators, delving into data science as well as machine learning, and using implementation research tools, send in your application.

This project is funded by the US National Institute of Mental Health, with collaborators from leading organizations including Harvard University, Vanderbilt University, the Broad Institute,AIIMS Bhopal.

Job profile:

• Support the training and supervision of the research assistants in conducting research activities.
• Support the study research coordinator and in pilot testing, study assessments, documentation,report writing, presentations, etc.
• Coordinate the field activities i.e., planning, coordination and implementation of consent, baseline and follow up assessments of the trial participants.
• Liaising with Medical Officers (MO) at primary healthcare facilities and assisting in rapid protocol training.
• Maintaining the fidelity metrics related to Anti-Depression Medication (ADM) at health facilities and liaising medications from health system.
• Facilitating in creating digital learning material for MOs.
• Support the qualitative research activities including analysis.
• Develop research outputs such as research summary, analysis tables and reports.
• Supervise the data collection process by research assistants and provide feedback for quality assurance.
• Facilitate research coordinator to obtain approvals from relevant ethics committees, and state and district health officialsfor the trial activities.
• Regularly update the Research Coordinator, Trial Manager, Director of Projects and Site PI on study planning,coordination and implementation.
• Schedule and participate in the regular project meetings, finalize summary notes and meeting minutes.
• Regular communication and follow up with other research team members to plan on research uptake activities.
• Lead and/or co-lead and/or support the relevant study manuscripts.
• Assist and participate in other Sangath activities.
• Execute other project related duties assigned by the trial manager and research coordinator.
• Report to the research coordinator, Trial Manager and Director of Projects.

Essential Candidate requirements

• Master’s degree in Public Health; Social Work; Psychology or related fields/discipline
• Fluency in Hindi and English
• Prior experience of working on a research project and similar role for a minimum of 3-4 years
• Good computing (MS Office), organizational and communication skills.

Desirable criteria

• Experience of working with multi-disciplinary teams.
• Experience in qualitative and quantitative data collection and analysis.
• Ability to work effectively both independently and as part of a team.
• Ability to work on tight deadlines.

Remuneration and contractual duration
Salary offered will be commensurate based on the education, work experience and as per applicable Sangath policy. The initial appointment will be made for six months’ probation fromthe date of joining, with renewal up to one year based on a performance review.

Last Date and address for applications

How to apply: Please apply through the google for https://bit.ly/ADMARC

Full applications must include a detailed CV and cover letter 31st August 23, 2023, 5:00 pm IST.

Short-listed candidates will be invited for a telephone, virtual or in-person interview.

For more details, please go through the website https://sangath.in/careers or write to  anuja.lahiri@sangath.in

*Incomplete applications will not be considered

Reg. Office: H No 451 (168) Bhatkar Waddo, Succour, Porvorim, Bardez, Goa 403501 Ph.: +91 7887872345
Bhopal Hub Office: 106, Good Shepherd Colony, Kolar Road, Bhopal – Madhya Pradesh – 462042. Tel.: (0755) 4936506

Email: admin.bhopal@sangath.in Website : http://sangath.in/bhopal

3. Research Assistant

Position: 01 (Full-Time)

Project: AANAND

Duration: Initial contract will be for one year.

Location: Bhopal

About the Project:
AANAND(Addressing ASHA well-beiNg And burnout for improviNg Depression care)

Summary: AANAND (https://sangath.in/aanand/) , a 3-year project, funded by Templeton World Charity
Foundation(https://www.templetonworldcharity.org/projects-database/randomized-controlled-trial effectiveness-positive-psychology-based-coaching ), will be the first-of-its-kind project in India that will focus on work stress and burnout of frontline health workers and develop a pioneering and scalable intervention to improve their well-being through a randomized controlled trial.

Background: Burnout and poor wellbeing are prevalent among rural health workers in India. These health
workers are responsible for providing last mile care in various areas such as pregnancy care, vaccinations, child care, as well as basic mental health services. There are more than 1 million female ‘ASHA’ workers at the village-level in India, one of the largest health worker programs in the world. A large group of ASHAs has been recently trained in Madhya Pradesh by us to deliver the ‘Healthy Activity Program (HAP)’, a brief psychological treatment for individuals with depression. This is critical, because depression is widespread in India but there are scarce numbers of psychiatrists and specialized mental health professionals. To provide effective care in mental health, an ASHA needs to empathize with the client’s beliefs, traditions and ethnicity, or what is called as ‘culturally competent care’. However, an ASHA, who is herself in distress or experiencing burnout and demotivation is less likely to engage with her clients, which can reduce their treatment satisfaction, and thus, the treatment outcomes (e.g., any improvement in depression symptoms).

Objectives
We aim to deliver this coaching program to a randomly selected group of ASHAs (or ‘intervention arm’) in Madhya Pradesh, and measure its effectiveness on ASHA’s wellbeing, compared to another randomly selected group of ASHAs who will receive routine supervision only (or ‘control arm’). The proposed intervention, which is a coaching program for ASHAs is based on the use of character strengths grounded in Indian spiritual values, to negotiate stressful work situations and relationships, and improve mental wellbeing. This intervention will be added on to the routine supervision that ASHAs already receive.

Job profile:

• Support the AANAND study investigators to design and develop the trial intervention, which will be a positive-psychology based coaching program for ASHA workers – including residential workshop and remote telephonic coaching
• Supporting literature review for intervention development
• Conducting the activities related to sampling health workers for character-strengths assessment, recruitment (informed consent), conducting the strengths assessment, and
• Supporting data entry and preliminary analysis of data
• Conducting the activities related to planning for field testing/validation of assessment tools, recruitment of study participants (informed consent), conducting field testing/validation of assessment tools, and supporting data entry and preliminary analysis
• Supporting the planning of focus group discussions (FGDs) with health workers, recruitment of study participants (informed consent), moderating the FGDs, compiling field notes & summary of FGDs, transcription, translation of FGDs and qualitative data coding and analysis
• Supporting the documentation of findings of literature review, field testing of tools, strengths assessment and focus group discussions
• Supporting the preparation for intervention development/review workshop and its execution
• Supporting the activities related to intervention development and piloting
• Supporting the pilot testing of the intervention with the study participants, internal review and external/collaborators’ reviews and finalization of the trial intervention
• Conducting consent, data collection and data entry for the intervention pilot study.
• Conducting formal recruitment of ASHAs (informed consent) into the trial
• Conducting the baseline, 1-, 3- and 6-month data collection on outcome assessments (main trial)
• Conducting trial data entry and data cleaning
• Supporting in data analysis and report writing.
• Coordination with all stakeholders and participants for intervention development, review and pilot, including organizing key meetings
• Report writing and documentation related to intervention design, pilot and finalization, trial roll-out including intervention delivery and outcome assessments

Essential requirements

• A Post graduate degree in Public Health, Research Ethics or related Social Sciences
• Expertise in MS Office (Word, PowerPoint, Excel)
• Strong verbal and written communication skills including technical and scientific writing
• Prior experience in systematic and narrative literature reviews
• Prior experience in qualitative research methods, data collection and data analysis
• At least 2-3 years of relevant research experience
• Ability to liaise and coordinate with relevant health system stakeholders and project collaborators for the purposes of intervention development, pilot, and implementation.
• This position requires travel to project sites in Madhya Pradesh
• An independent, organized, and proactive team player

Additional requirements

• Prior training in psychology or psychosocial interventions
• Expertise in systematic literature review (preferred)
• Expertise in working with and field data collection with health workers including administering informed consent (preferred)
• Expertise in NVivo for qualitative data analysis
• Expertise in quantitative analysis using SPSS or Stata
• Academic publications in peer reviewed journals (preferred)

Remuneration: Remuneration for this position will be commensurate with qualifications and experience.
The initial appointment will be made for six months’ probation from the date of joining, with renewal up
to one year based on a performance review.

How to apply:
Please apply with your CV and cover letter stating your interest and fit for the position, to https://bit.ly/AANAND-RA by August 31, 2023, 5.00 pm IST.

For any queries you may write to spriha.singh@sangath.in