Research Fellow CEI

Number of Positions: 1 (Bengaluru, Karnataka)

The Centre for Chronic Disease Control (CCDC) is a not-for-profit research organisation engaged in knowledge generation and knowledge translation for the prevention and control of non-communicable (chronic) diseases in varied settings of developing countries. CCDC has been recognised as a Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (SIRO) by the Department of Scientific & Industrial Research (DSIR), Ministry of Science and Technology, Government of India. CCDC also holds recognition as a WHO Collaborating Centre for Surveillance, Capacity Building and Translational Research in Cardio-metabolic diseases and is an ICMR Collaborating Centre of Excellence.

Project Brief: CCDC has been awarded a research grant by the National Institute for Health and Care Research, UK, to co-design, implement and evaluate a digital health intervention to improve the diagnosis and management of cardiovascular diseases and their risk factors among older adults under the research project entitled “Integrated, co-developed intervention for detection and management of cardiometabolic risk factors in older Indians (CARDIO-India)”. The CARDIO-India intervention will be co-designed with extensive and meaningful community engagement and involvement. Centre for Chronic Disease Control is seeking a proactive and experienced Research Fellow to assist CCDC’s partner Nightingales Medical Trust, Bangalore, to develop and implement the Community Engagement and Involvement strategy. Specifically, s/he will lead and coordinate meaningful community engagement and involvement activities across the CARDIO-India programme lifecycle – co-design, implementation, evaluation, dissemination and scale-up planning. The postholder will ensure that older adults, their caregivers, community leaders and frontline M

Job Description

The Research Fellow will be based in Bangalore and will manage CEI activities across diverse teams in multiple states. S/he will liaise with CCDC, HelpAge, the University of Leicester and other project partners to further the CEI objectives of the project. Key responsibilities include, but are not limited to, the following:

CEI strategy, planning and governance

• Lead the development of the CEI strategy in consultation with the project partners.
• Review literature to understand the best practices in CEI.
• Deliver the project CEI plan which is aligned with different work packages of the project.
• Organise CEI committee meetings and support its functioning by drafting agendas and minutes.
• Support the CEI lead to communicate progress to the project’s Programme Steering Committee.
• Coordinate recruitment, onboarding and ongoing support for patient representatives/community champions serving on programme committees (e.g., monitoring and steering), including role clarity, briefing packs and pre-meeting preparation.
• Ensure CEI activities are inclusive and accessible (language, literacy, disability, mobility constraints, digital access), and reflect Equality, Diversity and Inclusion principles.

Community recruitment, relationship-building and facilitation

• Work with HelpAge India’s Social Protection Officers to based in mobile health units to build trusted local relationships and enable ethical, voluntary participation in CEI and research activities.
• Coordinate recruitment, training and ongoing engagement of Community Champions (~ 24 in nos), supporting their roles in awareness, mobilisation, and feedback loops to the research team.
• Plan and deliver community-facing events and touchpoints (e.g., around World Health Day, World Hypertension Day, World Heart Day, World Diabetes Day) and ensure learning from these is documented and fed back into programme refinement.

Co-creation and intervention implementation

• Support co-design and co-refine activities by designing accessible workshop formats and materials.
• Facilitating the participatory workshops.
• Ensure balanced participation and minimise hierarchy in mixed-stakeholder spaces.
• Capture and synthesize CEI outputs (community priorities, acceptability concerns, usability feedback, especially for low-literacy and non-smartphone users),and ensuring these inform intervention design.
• Provide CEI input to trial mobilisation strategies to ensure recruitment and retention approaches are respectful, feasible and culturally appropriate.
• Work with teams to ensure participant-facing communication is clear (local language, low-literacy formats) and consistent across sites.

Dissemination, outputs and scale-up toolkit development

• Co-produce dissemination outputs with communities ensuring accessibility and local relevance.
• Contribute CEI content to the CARDIO-India toolkit, particularly guidance for engaging older people/caregivers in health decision-making and materials for community awareness and self-management of cardiovascular diseases.
• Support community dissemination events and stakeholder meetings (district/state/national) and document community perspectives for policy-facing outputs.

Programme management and reporting

• Provide regular written updates (monthly/quarterly) against CEI milestones, risks and mitigations; contribute to funder reporting as required.
• Contribute to manuscripts, conference abstracts and reports (particularly CEI methods/learning) as agreed with WP leads.

Responsibilities and Requirements

Qualification and Experience:

• S/he must have a relevant educational background and a minimum of three years of experience in working with communities to implement and/or evaluate health interventions.
• Master’s degree (or higher) in public health, social/behavioural sciences, community health, health promotion, anthropology, sociology, gerontology, implementation science or related field (or equivalent experience).
• Demonstrable experience delivering community engagement and/or public/patient involvement in health programmes or research
• Strong facilitation skills for participatory approaches (co-design workshops, community conversations, advisory groups) and experience developing materials for such approaches, especially for those with limited literacy.
• Excellent stakeholder management (NGOs, community leaders, health workers, researchers).
• Strong verbal and written communication; ability to produce clear reports and documentation.
• Ability to work independently across multiple sites; strong planning, coordination and problem-solving skills.
• Willingness and ability to travel extensively to field sites and work flexibly (including occasional weekends to align with community availability).
• Training/experience in qualitative methods, experience working with digital health interventions and supporting user engagement, familiarity with NCDs/CVD risk factors and community-based self-management support, and experience supporting governance structures that include community members will be an asset.

Application Process Information

Please send a detailed CV along with a cover letter to jobs@ccdcindia.org with the title “Research Fellow – CEI” in the subject line. Along with the above submissions please fill this form with some basic details. Please note applicants who have submitted both the resume and the information on the form link will be considered further for the shortlisting and interview process. Last date for sending your application is 15th May 2026. Shortlisted candidates will be contacted for the interview at the earliest.

Emoluments: Commensurate with experience qualification and guidelines.