Vulnerability in maternal, new-born, and child health in low- and middle-income countries: Findings from a scoping review

Olusesan Ayodeji Makinde; Olalekan A. Uthman; Ifeanyi C. Mgbachi; Nchelem Kokomma Ichegbo; Fatima Abdulaziz Sule; Emmanuel O. Olamijuwon; Babasola O. Okusanya

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0276747

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionMarch 21, 2022
16 Aug 2022 Decision Letter - Katrien Janin, Editor PONE-D-22-08032Vulnerability in Maternal, New-born, and Child Health in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: Findings from a scoping reviewPLOS ONE Dear Dr. Makinde, 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. The manuscript has been evaluated by two reviewers, and their comments are available below. The reviewers have raised a number of concerns that need attention. They request additional information on methodological aspects of the study, address limitations of the study, and the inclusion a flow diagram Could you please revise the manuscript to carefully address the concerns raised? Please submit your revised manuscript by Sep 26 2022 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: A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic 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'. 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Please see our Supporting Information guidelines for more information: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/supporting-information. [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: N/A ****** 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: Yes 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: Thank you for the opportunity to review this scoping review manuscript. I think this article has the potential to provide new insights into the field of MNCH, particularly in the LMICs context. I do have some inputs to help the authors to improve the manuscript: I wonder if similar scoping or systematic reviews exist to help elaborate the state of the art and/or research gap in the introduction. It is common that after conducting a review, a follow-up scan for articles published since articles were gathered is conducted to make sure no new articles had been published in that time. The one-year gap from 2021 to 2022 should be closed by a quick scan. The authors should do this, and if it was done, detail it in the methods section and as a study limitation. What are the credentials of the two reviewers? Placing the context and settings of the selected articles in the discussion section should improve the analysis. For example, comparing definitions and indices of vulnerability in Africa and comparing them to other regions. I think the authors should concentrate on discussing the limitation of the study, instead of the limitation of the method itself. Reviewer #2: This study is a scoping review that follows a systematic review process based on a framework and guidelines similar to Prisma. It has a registered protocol. The number of databases consulted is sufficient and wide-ranging. The gray literature has been reviewed. However, the date of the last search is old (it took place more than 15 months ago). On the other hand, it is striking that it is in March. I wonder if there is some objective reason for this. I suggest updating the search to at least December 31, 2021 or even later. The type of review and the methodology used really help to address the objective of the study. Minor comments: This phrase-ending “, with researchers examining their vulnerabilities.” can be omitted I think. Can you provide a reference for World Bank Country and Lending groups? Please, provide a reference for Ovid Northern Light Conference Abstracts instead of the description of the text. Could you please indicate the first and last name acronyms of the authors (within the manuscript) who participated in the screening and extraction phases? What was the inter-rather percentage agreement between the two literature reviewers? Please, add this proportion in the text. This phrase is repeated and therefore can be omitted > “Two authors independently charted key information from the included Publications” By curiosity, what is the utility of using Airtable if Excel is also used? Table 2. Column “Vulnerability scale” could be deleted. This information may be reflected in the text since no study used it to measure vulnerability. AUTHORS’ CONTRIBUTIONS, COMPETING INTEREST, ACKNOWLEDGEMENT and FUNDING sections are written in different font format. I missed a flow diagram. It would be convenient to include it. 38 did not meet the inclusion criteria and were subsequently excluded. Please, indicate exactly how the studies were grouped for each exclusion criterion. How many years did the search period cover? Please, provide this information into the manuscript. Language: This article has been written in an excellent English. ****** 6. 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: Yes: Indra Yohanes Kiling Reviewer #2: Yes: Maria Calatrava ******** [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. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: scoping review_plos one_agost22.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0276747.r001
Revision 1
24 Sep 2022 Author Response Dear Editro, We thank you for the feedback on our work ‘Vulnerability in Maternal, New-born, and Child Health in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: Findings from a scoping review’. We were able to use the feedback from the reviewers to improve the manuscript further. A point by point rebuttal is available below. We certainly would be available to address any further comments that the reviewers might have. Kind Regards’ Olusesan Makinde For the authors. PONE-D-22-08032 Vulnerability in Maternal, New-born, and Child Health in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: Findings from a scoping review PLOS ONE 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 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=ba62/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_title_authors_affiliations.pdf We have worked on preparing the manuscript in accordance with the style stated at the links. 2. We note that Figures 2 and 3 in your submission contain map images which may be copyrighted. All PLOS content is published under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which means that the manuscript, images, and Supporting Information files will be freely available online, and any third party is permitted to access, download, copy, distribute, and use these materials in any way, even commercially, with proper attribution. For these reasons, we cannot publish previously copyrighted maps or satellite images created using proprietary data, such as Google software (Google Maps, Street View, and Earth). For more information, see our copyright guidelines: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/licenses-and-copyright. We require you to either (1) present written permission from the copyright holder to publish these figures specifically under the CC BY 4.0 license, or (2) remove the figures from your submission: Response: The maps included in this manuscript were generated by the authors using ‘R’. R is an open-source programming language and there is no copyrighted material included in the entire manuscript. 3. Please include captions for your Supporting Information files at the end of your manuscript, and update any in-text citations to match accordingly. Please see our Supporting Information guidelines for more information: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/supporting-information. This has been done. 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 the opportunity to review this scoping review manuscript. I think this article has the potential to provide new insights into the field of MNCH, particularly in the LMICs context. I do have some inputs to help the authors to improve the manuscript: I wonder if similar scoping or systematic reviews exist to help elaborate the state of the art and/or research gap in the introduction. As at the time we started this project, no paper like this had been done. However, we have searched again and did not identify a similar work. It is common that after conducting a review, a follow-up scan for articles published since articles were gathered is conducted to make sure no new articles had been published in that time. The one-year gap from 2021 to 2022 should be closed by a quick scan. The authors should do this, and if it was done, detail it in the methods section and as a study limitation. We have updated the paper based on new papers published between our stated search date and August 2022. What are the credentials of the two reviewers? Two sets of reviewers who have expertise in maternal and child health independently reviewed the studies for inclusion. The Covidence software provided an opportunity for multiple people to review. In fact, all project authors contributed to this level of effort. Whenever there was a discrepancy, this was addressed during a weekly meeting of all investigators. Placing the context and settings of the selected articles in the discussion section should improve the analysis. For example, comparing definitions and indices of vulnerability in Africa and comparing them to other regions. We have added information to improve discussion from the definitions across countries on maternal and child health. However, this was difficult as even within countries, the definitions used by authors was not uniform. So geographic comparison was not that easy. I think the authors should concentrate on discussing the limitation of the study, instead of the limitation of the method itself. This section has been improved. Reviewer #2: This study is a scoping review that follows a systematic review process based on a framework and guidelines similar to Prisma. It has a registered protocol. The number of databases consulted is sufficient and wide-ranging. The gray literature has been reviewed. However, the date of the last search is old (it took place more than 15 months ago). On the other hand, it is striking that it is in March. I wonder if there is some objective reason for this. I suggest updating the search to at least December 31, 2021 or even later. The type of review and the methodology used really help to address the objective of the study. Minor comments: This phrase-ending “, with researchers examining their vulnerabilities.” can be omitted I think. This has been addressed. Can you provide a reference for World Bank Country and Lending groups? This has been included. Please, provide a reference for Ovid Northern Light Conference Abstracts instead of the description of the text. This has been done. Could you please indicate the first and last name acronyms of the authors (within the manuscript) who participated in the screening and extraction phases? Due to the Covidence software we used for managing the data, all authors participated in the screening and review of the articles. All authors met once every week to deliberate on any discrepancies till this stage of the research was completed. Thus, a statement mentioning the role all authors played has been further included in this section. What was the inter-rather percentage agreement between the two literature reviewers? Please, add this proportion in the text. We didn’t track this proportion during the study. This phrase is repeated and therefore can be omitted > “Two authors independently charted key information from the included Publications” This has been edited accordingly By curiosity, what is the utility of using Airtable if Excel is also used? Table 2. Column “Vulnerability scale” could be deleted. This information may be reflected in the text since no study used it to measure vulnerability. It was for convenience and because we were all working remotely, Airtable was a better option when we started with the large dataset. AUTHORS’ CONTRIBUTIONS, COMPETING INTEREST, ACKNOWLEDGEMENT and FUNDING sections are written in different font format. I missed a flow diagram. It would be convenient to include it. It was added as Figure 1. 38 did not meet the inclusion criteria and were subsequently excluded. Please, indicate exactly how the studies were grouped for each exclusion criterion. We have added information on reasons for exclusion. Due to the update search we did, the number of articles excluded has increased. "Of these, 49 did not meet the inclusion criteria and were subsequently excluded, because of wrong population (n=25), wrong outcomes reported (n=16) and conducted in high-income countries (n=8)." How many years did the search period cover? Please, provide this information into the manuscript. There was no limit to the search. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: PONE_Rebuttal Letter.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0276747.r002
10 Oct 2022 Decision Letter - Chhabi Lal Ranabhat, Editor PONE-D-22-08032R1Vulnerability in Maternal, New-born, and Child Health in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: Findings from a scoping reviewPLOS ONE Dear Dr. Makinde, 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 Nov 24 2022 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: A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic 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'. 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: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols. Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option for publishing peer-reviewed Lab Protocol articles, which describe protocols hosted on protocols.io. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols. We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript. Kind regards, Chhabi Lal Ranabhat Academic Editor PLOS ONE Journal Requirements: Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice. Additional Editor Comments: Dear Authors, An interesting paper particularly in low and middle income countries. I went through your paper and reviewers comments. I have following suggestion to revise and resubmit. 1) Your conclusion writing in abstract is going on wrong way. It does not accept the previous study statements and it does not accept any quote writing "“State or condition of women in ........resources". Please remove it. 2) Add some sentences or one paragraph where is the previous study gap and how this study bridge that gap in scientific community. Here are some reference papers, please read and cite as necessary. i) https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2019.00414/full ii) https://archpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13690-019-0331-7 iii)https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03630242.2016.1267689 iv) https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1545-0 Good luck!!! [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] 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: Yes Reviewer #2: N/A ****** 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: Thank you for addressing all of the comments. I think current version of the manuscript is worthy to be published. Congratulations to the authors! Reviewer #2: Good work! I have one comment: the figure 1 (flow chart) needs to be updated with new data. Please, considere it. ****** 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: Yes: Indra Yohanes Kiling Reviewer #2: Yes: María Calatrava ******** [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. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0276747.r003
Revision 2
11 Oct 2022 Author Response Dear Editor, Greetings and thanks for asking for further updates on the manuscript. We have used the feedback provided to update the manuscript further. Below, we provide a point-by-point response to your comments. Thanks for your support. Journal Requirements: Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice. The references were reviewed and only appropriate references have been included and all were listed in the bibliography. Additional Editor Comments: Dear Authors, An interesting paper particularly in low and middle income countries. I went through your paper and reviewers comments. I have following suggestion to revise and resubmit. 1) Your conclusion writing in abstract is going on wrong way. It does not accept the previous study statements and it does not accept any quote writing "“State or condition of women in ........resources". Please remove it. 2) Add some sentences or one paragraph where is the previous study gap and how this study bridge that gap in scientific community. Here are some reference papers, please read and cite as necessary. i) https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2019.00414/full ii) https://archpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13690-019-0331-7 iii)https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03630242.2016.1267689 iv) https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1545-0 Good luck!!! We have worked on the abstract and rewritten the conclusion as suggested. We have reviewed the articles you shared and have incorporated two that were much in line with the topic. Reviewer #2: Good work! I have one comment: the figure 1 (flow chart) needs to be updated with new data. Please, considere it. We have replaced Fig 1 with the appropriate version. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0276747.r004
13 Oct 2022 Decision Letter - Chhabi Lal Ranabhat, Editor Vulnerability in Maternal, New-born, and Child Health in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: Findings from a scoping review PONE-D-22-08032R2 Dear Authors, 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, Chhabi Lal Ranabhat Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): Reviewers' comments: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0276747.r005
Formally Accepted
17 Oct 2022 Acceptance Letter - Chhabi Lal Ranabhat, Editor PONE-D-22-08032R2 Vulnerability in Maternal, New-born, and Child Health in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: Findings from a scoping review Dear Dr. Makinde: 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 Dr. Chhabi Lal Ranabhat Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0276747.r006

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