Job Opportunity for HAP Counsellor at Sangath in Bhopal

Position: 8 (Full-Time)
Job Title: HAP Counsellor
Project: Improving Outcomes in Depression in Primary Care in a Low Resource Setting
Duration: Initial contract will be for one year (and will be extended depending on performance and funding). The study duration is four years.
Location: Bhopal

About the Organisation: Sangath 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 health, adult health and chronic diseases.

About the Project: The goal of the 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 learning to develop a precision treatment rule (PTR) based on a wide range of baseline moderators which are 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, etc.

Job profile:

• Provide counselling to patients as and when referred by the screener

• Visiting patient home for delivering counselling sessions and follow-up

• Completing all the procedures/training to become a HAP counsellor

• Ensure regular and timely attendance on weekly/fourth nightly/monthly supervision meetings

• Delivering counselling sessions and attending remote supervision sessions using a mobile app (CommCare), if required

• Assisting in planning events to raise awareness of mental health in the project area

• Prepare and timely update the list of free government schemes/services for patients receiving counselling under the project

• Along with Intervention lead, strengthen the referral linkages with government agencies, networking with CBOs and NGOs working on various social and mental health issues.

• Assisting the intervention team in the documentation of the project activities.

• Maintain close communication with the project intervention team

• Establish and maintain clear communication and effective working relationships with government and non-government agencies, local stakeholders, and health professionals.

• Maintain necessary case and programme registers/documents and report to supervisors.

• Perform any other duties assigned by the supervisor/Intervention lead/Project director

Requirement/Eligibility

• Masters level education in psychology, public health, population sciences, psychiatric social work, social work, and any other relevant discipline.

• Experience of 1-2 years in counselling, training, supervision and project coordination/management development sector, and experience in public health research/implementation projects will be an added value.

• Experience in working with Public Health systems such as PHCs/CHCs/District Hospitals.

• Willingness to be based on, or relocate to Bhopal (position is Bhopal based).

Desirable characteristics:

• Experience in working with multi-disciplinary teams

• Experience in providing counselling in mental health in public health care settings.

Remuneration: As per Sangath salary scales

How to apply: Send your application from the google link here: https://bit.ly/HAPCounsellor with the following documents no later than 25th November 2022, 5:00 pm IST.

• Curriculum Vitae.

• Cover letter with the following information-salary expectations, and willingness to relocate to Bhopal.

Note: Please state the job title and project name clearly in the subject line of the email for the application to be considered.

Sangath is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, religion, color, national origin, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, among other things, or status as a qualified individual with disability.