PGPH-D-23-00401

Cardiovascular disease prevention: Community Based Asset Mapping within religious networks in a rural Sub-Saharan African neighbourhood

PLOS Global Public Health

Dear Dr. Willis,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS Global Public Health. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS Global Public Health’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

This an important paper. We have received some comments from an external peer reviewer. I have also included my own comments. Kindly go through them carefully and revise your manuscript. 

Please submit your revised manuscript by Jun 25 2023 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at globalpubhealth@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pgph/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file.

Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript:

• A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'.
• A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'.
• An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'.

Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter.

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Vijayaprasad Gopichandran

Academic Editor

PLOS Global Public Health

Journal Requirements:

1. Please include a complete copy of PLOS’ questionnaire on inclusivity in global research in your revised manuscript. Our policy for research in this area aims to improve transparency in the reporting of research performed outside of researchers’ own country or community. The policy applies to researchers who have travelled to a different country to conduct research, research with Indigenous populations or their lands, and research on cultural artefacts. The questionnaire can also be requested at the journal’s discretion for any other submissions, even if these conditions are not met.  Please find more information on the policy and a link to download a blank copy of the questionnaire here: https://journals.plos.org/globalpublichealth/s/best-practices-in-research-reporting. Please upload a completed version of your questionnaire as Supporting Information when you resubmit your manuscript.

2. Please send a completed 'Competing Interests' statement, including any COIs declared by your co-authors. If you have no competing interests to declare, please state "The authors have declared that no competing interests exist". Otherwise please declare all competing interests beginning with the statement "I have read the journal's policy and the authors of this manuscript have the following competing interests:"

3. Please amend your detailed Financial Disclosure statement. This is published with the article. It must therefore be completed in full sentences and contain the exact wording you wish to be published.

a. State the initials, alongside each funding source, of each author to receive each grant.

b. State what role the funders took in the study. If the funders had no role in your study, please state: “The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.”

c. If any authors received a salary from any of your funders, please state which authors and which funders.

Additional Editor Comments (if provided):

Thank you for submitting your manuscript for consideration. We appreciate the efforts at conducting a research on an important topic. engaging with faith based institutions and organisations is an important activity in health promotion especially for non communicable diseases as it involves adoption of new and healthy life styles. However, there are several limitations in the way the manuscript has been written. If these are revised, the manuscript can be made more meaningful and readable. Please note the following comments

1. In the methods section it is not clear how the participants were selected in the study. It is mentioned that it was purposive selection. But the exact details of how they were selected in not provided.

2. Why did the researchers choose to conduct the interviews and group discussions in the faith based organisations like churches and mosques? It would have been better to conduct them at the community level as even people from distances far away from the religious institutions could have participated and they could have brought in the perspective of distance.

3. Who conducted the IDI and FGDs? What is their background? What religion did they practice? Some details of the interviewers would be helpful.

4. A reflexivity note by the interviewers would also be helpful to interpret the findings of the research.

5. More details must be provided on how the data analysis was done. how many researchers did the coding and theme building? what processes were adopted for coding and theorising?

6. The entire paper lacks any verbatim quotes. The authors must provide verbatim quotes along with a brief description of the persons who said those quotes.

7. There are several methods used by researchers to get participants to engage actively in participatory methods. For example, they may be asked to draw maps, they may be asked to sort resources into groups, etc. What participatory action method was used by the authors in this study? This is not explained.

8. There is no mention of what methods were adopted to ensure credibility, dependability, transferability and confirmability of the qualitative research findings. This must be clarified in the paper.

the authors should carefully go through these critical inputs and revise their manuscript accordingly.

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Reviewers' comments:

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

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

Reviewer #1: N/A

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3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available (please refer to the Data Availability Statement at the start of the manuscript PDF file)?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception. The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

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4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS Global Public Health does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: 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: Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The authors conducted a study to identify and catalogue community-based assets for the purposes of developing and deploying a screening and education programme for cardiometabolic risk factors (diabetes and hypertension) within religious organisations in a local community in a rural Ghanaian context. The paper is very well-written, well-organized, and interesting. They used appropriate participatory approaches and provided an adequate discussion of the results. I have a few minor editorial comments that will hopefully improve the paper.

* The author has mentioned that they have used Community-based Asset Mapping with a different approach. Did the authors consider ways that findings from different stakeholders traditional (faith healers, traditional healers) and modern medicine (nurses, pharmacists, doctors) can be applied in best practice for CVD screening and educational programs?

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Reviewer #1: No

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Cardiovascular disease prevention: Community Based Asset Mapping within religious networks in a rural Sub-Saharan African neighbourhood

PGPH-D-23-00401R1

Dear Dr Willis,

We are pleased to inform you that your manuscript 'Cardiovascular disease prevention: Community Based Asset Mapping within religious networks in a rural Sub-Saharan African neighbourhood' has been provisionally accepted for publication in PLOS Global Public Health.

Before your manuscript can be formally accepted you will need to complete some formatting changes, which you will receive in a follow up email. A member of our team will be in touch with a set of requests.

Please note that your manuscript will not be scheduled for publication until you have made the required changes, so a swift response is appreciated.

IMPORTANT: The editorial review process is now complete. PLOS will only permit corrections to spelling, formatting or significant scientific errors from this point onwards. Requests for major changes, or any which affect the scientific understanding of your work, will cause delays to the publication date of your manuscript.

If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to help maximize its impact. If they'll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team as soon as possible -- no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact globalpubhealth@plos.org.

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

Best regards,

Vijayaprasad Gopichandran

Academic Editor

PLOS Global Public Health

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Reviewer Comments (if any, and for reference):