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PONE-D-19-17815

Patterns of healthcare services utilization associated with intimate partner violence (IPV): effects of IPV screening and receiving information among a cohort of women

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Daoud,

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

We would appreciate receiving your revised manuscript by Oct 26 2019 11:59PM. When you are ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file.

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We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Soraya Seedat

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately 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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3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). 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

Reviewer #2: Yes

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

PLOS ONE 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

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: Thank you for submitting this very important manuscript about intimate partner violence and healthcare services utilization. Overall, this is a very well-written and well-developed manuscript. I appreciate the intention of specifically teasing apart the differences in healthcare service utilization among two cultural groups living in the same country. I have a few suggestions throughout the manuscript that could use some additional details and clarification to help the reader fully interpret the results.

Throughout Manuscript:

1) Since this manuscript focuses exclusively on pregnant and postpartum women, I would amend the title to note that, “Patterns of healthcare service utilization associated with intimate partner violence (IPV): Effects of IPV screening and receiving information among a cohort of perinatal women.

2) Throughout the manuscript I would stress that this is “self-identified” IPV and that you still likely have an underestimation of the true prevalence among study participants.

3) The term women/woman implies gender; it appears your subjects were are of the female sex (as they were able to conceive). I think it would be important to consider your use of gender/sex.

Introduction:

4) The term social IPV is introduced on page 5, but a definition of “social IPV” is not provided until page 10. Furthermore, there are numerous points throughout the manuscript where social/economic IPV are combined and then others where they are not. Can you please clarify the use of social/economic IPV earlier in the manuscript?

5) I would also encourage the authors to take a look at the recent review on provided screening and counseling for IPV (Alvarez, Fedock, Grace, & Campbell, 2017, Trauma, Violence, & Abuse) for the introduction section.

Methods:

6) How was the cut-off for healthcare services utilization determined (e.g., low versus high use)? Since many of the participants were enrolled during pregnancy, then wouldn’t they automatically be “high-use” patients related to their antepartum care visits? How was this factored in?

7) How did you determine your age groups? Why was age 48 included if your highest age was 44?

8) Why was the level of significance set at p=.10? It appears you were powered to use a more traditional p-value of .05.

Discussion

9) There are currently debates about the usefulness of universal screening for IPV versus universal screening for safety or providing universal education (e.g., Jack, Ford-Gilboe, Davidov, & MacMillan, 2017, Journal of Clinical Nursing; Miller, Breach, & Thurston, 2018, JAMA Internal Medicine). How do these debates factor into your findings and the current policies in Israel?

10) Prevalence of abuse during pregnancy varies (Devries et al., 2010, Reproductive Health Matters) and can be dependent on age, gravida, and location. I think it would also be important to cite literature that looks at the global picture beyond Canada.

Reviewer #2: I want tot commend you on the submission of your study titled: Patters of healthcare service utilization with intimate partner violence: effects of IPV screening and receiving information among a cohort of women.

The author(s) present a robust manuscript worth of publication.

I have identified several areas that require clarification.

Title: clarify type of information being provided or received. The term information is too vague.

List of abbreviations: add VAW Violence Against Women

Introduction: substitute diseases in line 70 for infections.

Define intimate partner violence in the introduction section.

The term 'victim' is underscored in your study. What about the term survivor. Why was this term not used or is it not applicable? if not why not?

Line 86 missing 'of' between many these.

Line 91: elaborate on what getting help means.

Line 92: consider using the term trust or confidence instead of faith in the health care system.

Line 121: consider using the term women experiencing violence rather that victims.

Line 127: did you account for sexual violence and if not why not. Elaborate.

Line 136: social and personal barriers. Please elaborate.

Line 181: use (n=1401)

Line 220: close spacing between study and ,

Study measures: well described. Salient and consistent with study intent.

Results: presented clearly. Adequate statistical tests and models selected.

table 2. Line 309. May want to draw line after Arab women to highlight sample.

Line 315-316: use %'s.

Again if sexual abuse was accounted for include results. Line 318-322

Multivariate associations drawn are accurate and consistent with research aims.

Line 488: table 7 Include the n= in table heading to keep consistent with preservation of other tables.

Discussion sections is well articulated as well.

Limitations are described and cited.

I would like to see the author(s) elaborate on the implications for practice and policy.

Again, I was to thank you for your valuable submission and encourage you to address the questions and comments.

Regards -

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Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: Yes: Eva Margarita Moya

[NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files to be viewed.]

While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email us at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step.

PONE-D-19-17815R1

Patterns of healthcare services utilization associated with intimate partner violence (IPV): effects of IPV screening and receiving information on support services in a cohort of perinatal women

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Daoud,

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

We would appreciate receiving your revised manuscript by Jan 11 2020 11:59PM. When you are ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file.

If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter.

To enhance the reproducibility of your results, we recommend that if applicable you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io, where a protocol can be assigned its own identifier (DOI) such that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols

Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript:

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

Please note while forming your response, if your article is accepted, you may have the opportunity to make the peer review history publicly available. The record will include editor decision letters (with reviews) and your responses to reviewer comments. If eligible, we will contact you to opt in or out.

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Soraya Seedat

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed

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2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

**********

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

**********

4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). 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

**********

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

PLOS ONE 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

**********

6. 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: Thank you for addressing the reviewers’ suggestions and re-submitting this very important manuscript. The clarity of the manuscript has been greatly improved with these edits. I have a couple of very minor suggestions below that would be helpful to address before publication (particularly point #4). Good work!

Minor Edits:

1) Page 3, Lines 71-74. This sentence needs to be restructured. I would suggest: “Women experience more IPV compared to men (5). As a result they are more likely to suffer the consequences of IPV including injury, sexual transmitted infections including HIV, depression, sleep and eating disorders, and alcohol and drug addictions.

2) Spell out abbreviations the first time they are introduced (e.g., EU on page 3, line 80) and then use them consistently without reintroduction (e.g., violence against women is not needed before VAW on page 4, line 101)

3) Page 4, line 98 seems to be missing a word: “Therefore a complex set of factors …”

4) Page 10, lines 260-262 – Should this be physical and/or sexual IPV? As well as emotional and/or verbal violence? I would assume that your factor analysis “clustered” these together based on their co-occurrence and that many women might be experiencing them together. If this is the correct interpretation, then it should be corrected throughout the manuscript.

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7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #1: No

[NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files to be viewed.]

While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email us at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step.

Patterns of healthcare services utilization associated with intimate partner violence (IPV): effects of IPV screening and receiving information on support services in a cohort of perinatal women

PONE-D-19-17815R2

Dear Dr. Daoud,

We are pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it complies with all outstanding technical requirements.

Within one week, you will receive an e-mail containing information on the amendments required prior to publication. When all required modifications have been addressed, you will receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will proceed to our production department and be scheduled for publication.

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With kind regards,

Soraya Seedat

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments: