Peer Review History
Original SubmissionAugust 31, 2020 |
---|
PONE-D-20-27331 Home birth preference, childbirth, and newborn care practices in Kukama-Kukamira communities in rural Amazonas PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Del Mastro Naccarato, 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 points raised during the review process. Please submit your revised manuscript by Dec 10 2020 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 plosone@plos.org. When you're 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. Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript:
If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter. If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript. Kind regards, Emma Sacks Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments: This is an important study from an under-researched part of the world. However, the paper needs significant revisions. The reviewers have given very thorough and helpful suggestions. It would help if the introduction included answers to the following: What is new? Is this an update from a previous study? Is there currently a growing stigma for home births? What do people understand about the risk of maternal mortality? Overall, the manuscript needs significant grammatical editing before it can be considered for publication. Line 29 – is “every second” literal? Line 40- how are drying and cord cutting related here? Again on line 443, the question arises again. Delayed cord clamping is actually recommended to increase iron to the baby. Couldn’t the cord be dried even if there was a delay in having it cut? Line 41- what are “heterogenous” answers? Line 55 – is this a rate or a percentage? Line 74- more details needed on this integration. When was this? How many facilities? Line 102 – accessible to where? Line 113- were observational data included? Line 126- please include numbers of respondents and justification for the sample size Line 130 – spelling should be midwives (or can keep as parteras?); are sobedoras different than TBAs? Line 141- please include consent process details Line 143- please include the languages, and if tools were pre-tested Line 180- why was the stay in each community so short? This would be difficult for a phenomenological study Line 192- what are the roles and training of CHWs? Line 222- were experiences of mistreatment expressed directly or second hand stories? Line 266- please spell out SJS Line 279- is it only gendered factors, or also intrafamiliar, and other power dynamics? Line 281- what is “L”? Line 313- what types of “things” are asked for? Line 329- are TBAs supposed to get gloves from health facilities? Line 349- do godmothers and godfathers have different roles? Line 351- were responses not clear, or just given in a range? Line 362- is “carried her” the same as skin to skin care? Line 374- who is “they”? Line 394- “people want to” should be changed to indicate less choice, given constraints Line 400- lack of awareness by who? Line 410- who is “their”? Line 416- please see the following publication, showing a large percent of women experience unconsented vaginal exams and other disrespectful care - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31604660/ Line 423- what language is spoken at the health care center? Line 449- this is not clear – what is the link between pushing and having relatives present? (are the fathers of the babies allowed in health facilities?) Line 465- are other liquids given when breastfeeding is delayed? Line 466- who is this reported by? Line 473- please see recent evidence related to the risk of bed sharing - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27940805/ Line 479- the average number of days when colostrum is available is known Line 484 – is this maternal or neonatal mortality? Line 486- use word like “beneficial” rather than suitable, which is more judgmental Line 500 – please provide some examples of cultural adaptations The discussion would be strengthened with more references to the other work that has been conducted on maternal and postnatal care and careseeking in latin America. Please see the following citations: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29325572/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23360944/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16225975/ If available, please include a demographic table or description of the participants. Please append the interview guides. It would be helpful, in the results, to understand the weight of various factors that participants describe that help them decide when and where to seek care. Please include a strengths and limitations section. Journal Requirements: When submitting your revision, we need you to address these additional requirements. 1. Please ensure that your manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements, including those for file naming. The PLOS ONE style templates can be found at https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=wjVg/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_main_body.pdf and 2. Please include a copy of the interview guide used in the study, in both the original language and English, as Supporting Information, or include a citation if it has been published previously. 3. We note that you have indicated that data from this study are available upon request. PLOS only allows data to be available upon request if there are legal or ethical restrictions on sharing data publicly. For more information on unacceptable data access restrictions, please see http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-unacceptable-data-access-restrictions. In your revised cover letter, please address the following prompts: a) If there are ethical or legal restrictions on sharing a de-identified data set, please explain them in detail (e.g., data contain potentially sensitive information, data are owned by a third-party organization, etc.) and who has imposed them (e.g., an ethics committee). Please also provide contact information for a data access committee, ethics committee, or other institutional body to which data requests may be sent. b) If there are no restrictions, please upload the minimal anonymized data set necessary to replicate your study findings as either Supporting Information files or to a stable, public repository and provide us with the relevant URLs, DOIs, or accession numbers. For a list of acceptable repositories, please see http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-recommended-repositories. We will update your Data Availability statement on your behalf to reflect the information you provide. 4. Please amend either the title on the online submission form (via Edit Submission) or the title in the manuscript so that they are identical. [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] 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 ********** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: N/A Reviewer #2: Yes ********** 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 ********** 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: No Reviewer #2: Yes ********** 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: 1. Summary of the research This study presents a compelling qualitative analysis of home birth preferences and practices among the Kukama-Kukamira people of rural Amazonas. These findings have significant implications for maternal and infant health as they elucidate the cultural meaning ascribed to home birth, the rationale for its preference over institutional delivery, and homebirth and newborn practices among indigenous communities in the Amazonas. The authors propose that these findings can be used to promote evidence-based maternal and newborn care practices during home birth and inform the integration of cultural practices in institutional birthing facilities. 2. Examples and Evidence a. Major Issues It is unclear whether the authors are ultimately recommending improving home birth practices (as is intended with the community-based intervention) or integrating cultural practices into hospital systems to increase institutional births. Even so, health systems must first address the structural barriers impacting access to institutional deliveries, namely distance from facility and cost of transportation. The authors should more clearly indicate what the ultimate implications of their findings are. The phenomenological and case study approach is appropriate to address the proposed research questions and the theoretical framework was adequately applied. The process of conducting a second round of interviews ensures deeper exploration of the processes being examined. Authors should state whether the interviews were conducted in Spanish and if so, how they were translated. I am concerned about how conducting the interviews in participants’ homes may have impacted responses, especially in relation to discussions of partners’ decision-making and gender roles in relation to institutional deliveries as participants may have felt uneasy with speaking openly if their partners were present or nearby. Please elaborate on the data analysis methodology – were all transcripts (besides the first two that were double-coded) coded by I.D.M and P.T.? What do the authors mean by “we collectively decided how to organize the themes of this paper” in line 168? The results are comprehensive and the quotes illustrative of the identified themes. One way to improve this section would be to tease apart discrepancies between ideas from different types of respondents – what were the differences in perspectives from mothers, partners, traditional healers, community health workers, and female relatives. For example, did postpartum women mention cost or distance as deterrents to institutional births? If there were no differences in responses, this should be noted. The findings are contextualized appropriately within the broader literature on home birth practices and barriers to institutional deliveries. Some review of the literature on provider perspectives may further illuminate why women prefer home births instead of institutional deliveries, and how providers view these populations and the services that they deliver. Are there any illustrative quotes demonstrating mistrust or perceived low quality of care by women toward health center staff? This is a key point in the discussion (lines 418-426) yet the data presented in the results does not sufficiently support this. Regarding the section on bravery, do the authors have recommendations on how to leverage this information to promote institutional births? What is it about home births that signifies bravery and would it be possible to recreate this within a healthcare setting? This may be beyond the scope of this paper. Are there any studies related to partner influence on birth decisions that can be referenced to further support the authors’ discussion of partner decision-making and gendered factors? In making recommendations for clean home birth practices, authors should acknowledge the importance of structural factors such as access to water and sanitation as necessary resources for implementation of hygienic birth practices. Finally, please proofread for grammatical mistakes throughout. b. Minor Issues Line 35: I recommend revising “birth represents a meaningful…practice” to more specific phrasing (e.g., home birth represents a courageous act.”) Line 81: Please briefly explain how cultural birthing practices differ in the Peruvian Andes as compared to the Amazon, and why cultural integration policies implemented by the Peruvian government have been unsuccessful in the Peruvian Amazon. Lines 87-88: Who would be the target of clean birth and newborn care interventions – mothers, relatives, traditional birth attendants? Lines 127-131: How might the exclusion of health center staff perspectives impacted study findings? Lines 325, 328, & 329: The word “gloves” is misspelled. Lines 416-417: Can you cite evidence to support this claim? Line 442: The authors describe the role of the godmother as a “barrier for institutional birth.” Is this cultural practice a barrier in itself or, is the barrier the health center’s reluctance to integrate cultural practices into their delivery services? I recommend reconsidering the language used in this sentence. Line 499: Do you mean primary care services? Or obstetric services? Reviewer #2: This is a well-crafted research study on the home birth preference and practices among women in the rural Peruvian Amazon. Due to the general lack of research in this area and the critical need to include indigenous people's voices in questions surrounding their own health care, the qualitative methodology was an appropriate research strategy. The authors clearly described their use of standard approaches for recruiting and engaging participants, for gathering data (interviews), and for their analysis. The results revealed important insights into the barriers that prevent rural Peruvian women and their families from obtaining care in institutional facilities as opposed to their homes, and the discussion contained useful recommendations for community- and institutionally-based care providers. For revision, I would suggest: 1) include a table with descriptive characteristics of the sample, as it was heterogeneous and could be made clearer in table form; 2) include a bit more comparison/contrast from the different participant subgroups (e.g., women who recently gave birth, godmothers, fathers) as the sample heterogeneity raised questions about possible differences; 3) consider discussing how the impact of your efforts could be extended by future research that included health care officials' responses to these and related study findings. [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.] 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 PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step. |
Revision 1 |
Home birth preference, childbirth, and newborn care practices in rural Peruvian Amazon PONE-D-20-27331R1 Dear Dr. Del Mastro Naccarato, We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements. Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication. An invoice for payment will follow shortly after the formal acceptance. To ensure an efficient process, please log into Editorial Manager at http://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/, click the 'Update My Information' link at the top of the page, and double check that your user information is up-to-date. If you have any billing related questions, please contact our Author Billing department directly at authorbilling@plos.org. 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 onepress@plos.org. Kind regards, Tanya Doherty, PhD Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): 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 Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed ********** 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 Reviewer #2: Yes ********** 3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: N/A Reviewer #2: 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 Reviewer #2: 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 Reviewer #2: 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: The authors have adequately addressed comments and revised the manuscript accordingly. I recommend this article for publication and believe it will make a significant contribution to the field of research on home births among indigenous populations in Latin America. Reviewer #2: I am just filling this in because the system will not allow me to submit my review unless I meet a minimum number of characters to submit it -- I am not sure what the problem is. ********** 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 Reviewer #2: Yes: Elizabeth Soliday |
Formally Accepted |
PONE-D-20-27331R1 Home birth preference, childbirth, and newborn care practices in rural Peruvian Amazon Dear Dr. Del Mastro N.: I'm pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now with our production department. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please let them know about your upcoming paper now to help maximize its impact. If they'll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team within the next 48 hours. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information please contact onepress@plos.org. If we can help with anything else, please email us at plosone@plos.org. Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE and supporting open access. Kind regards, PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff on behalf of Professor Tanya Doherty Academic Editor PLOS ONE |
Open letter on the publication of peer review reports
PLOS recognizes the benefits of transparency in the peer review process. Therefore, we enable the publication of all of the content of peer review and author responses alongside final, published articles. Reviewers remain anonymous, unless they choose to reveal their names.
We encourage other journals to join us in this initiative. We hope that our action inspires the community, including researchers, research funders, and research institutions, to recognize the benefits of published peer review reports for all parts of the research system.
Learn more at ASAPbio .