PGPH-D-22-01534

Spatio-temporal estimates of HIV risk group proportions for adolescent girls and young women across 13 priority countries in sub-Saharan Africa

PLOS Global Public Health

Dear Dr. Howes,

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PLOS Global Public Health

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Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Does this manuscript meet PLOS Global Public Health’s publication criteria? Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe methodologically and ethically rigorous research with conclusions that are appropriately drawn based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: In the manuscript, explain why you use the INLA not WINBUGS coding?

The multinomial regression could be modeled in WINBUGS directly.

Is there no other potential covariate that could be used for better modeling?

Please explain sub-national effect more clearly. Why and how you used it?

why the interaction term for spatiotemporal effect didn't consider in the modeling framework?

Reviewer #2: This is a well-crafted manuscript investigating the spatio-temporal estimates of HIV risk group proportions for adolescent girls and young women across 13 priority countries in sub-Saharan Africa. Their analyses identify specific age groups at the district level that should be targeted for HIV intervention in SSA. This is critical in reducing the HIV epidemic in the southern region of SSA. In addition to the main figures, the supplementary Tables and Figures show country-by-country risk, mostly among female sex workers for all age groups. With the help of their models, specific resources can target at-risk populations with a moderate assurance of how many people to reach and where these resources should go.

My little concern is about using different data from UNAIDS Key Population Atlas apart from the DHS, which is the may source data for the analyses. I believe the two variants of data are based on different designs, and combining them may not result in dependable results. It would have been more attainable if the UNAIDS data had been used in their sensitivity analysis to confirm the results from the DHS data.

Figure 1 is not clear. I recommend that the authors use a table as an alternative visualization.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: Yes: Ayodeji E. Iyanda

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Spatio-temporal estimates of HIV risk group proportions for adolescent girls and young women across 13 priority countries in sub-Saharan Africa

PGPH-D-22-01534R1

Dear Mr Howes,

We are pleased to inform you that your manuscript 'Spatio-temporal estimates of HIV risk group proportions for adolescent girls and young women across 13 priority countries in sub-Saharan Africa' has been provisionally accepted for publication in PLOS Global Public Health.

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Thank you again for supporting Open Access publishing; we are looking forward to publishing your work in PLOS Global Public Health.

Best regards,

Lucy Chimoyi, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS Global Public Health

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Reviewer Comments (if any, and for reference):