PONE-D-22-19730Equity in walking access to community home care facility resources for elderly with different mobility: A case study of Lianhu District, Xi'anPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Lu,

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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: No

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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: This study investigated the equity in walking access to community home care facilities for elderly people with different mobility abilities in Lianhu District of Xi’an City. The research approach is simple, but the research topic is interesting and meaningful since few studies focused on the perspective of elderly people with different physiological differences. The reviewer has a few suggestions for the authors that can help improve the paper.

1. On Page 5, there are “121” community home care service stations, which is not consistent with “117” in Table 1.

2. In subsection 2.2.2, it does not clear how to calculate the number of elderly population in the community from the street-level aging rate.

3. In subsection 3.1, the authors should specify the measurement method of gait speed, which is the key to measuring the walking time.

4. In subsection 3.1, the author needs to further explain the sampling method to prove that the sample is representative. In addition, why not use the percentage of elderly with different mobility abilities in these obtained samples?

5. On Page 13, what are the criteria for the coverage rate of community home care facilities to be considered to be low?

6. On Page 14, are walkability and accessibility the same concept? If yes, a unified word is recommended.

7. On Page 20, “The location entropy is used to analyze the spatial pattern of the matching between the elderly with normal mobility and the elderly with and the resources of community home care facilities.” This sentence seems to have missed something after the second “with”.

8. In section 4, the similarities and differences with previous studies should be further discussed. The object of Zhao’s study is lower-aged elderly people, which is not comparable with this paper.

9. Some limitations and future work should be provided.

Reviewer #2: Comments: This paper analyzes the equity in walking access to community home care facilities for elderly people with different mobility abilities in Lianhu District of Xi’an City, taking the resources of community home care facilities as the research object, and there are some problems as shown below.

Question1: In the introduction, the author just lists the existing references, and a detailed summary of the references is needed. At the same time, a brief description of the rest of the paper should be added at the end of the introduction.

Question2: In the materials and methods, the authors just used the existing methods (Kernel Density-type two-step floating catchment area method; Gini coefficient method and Lorenz curve method; Location entropy) to analyze the problem, and do not mention the innovation or improvement of these methods.

Question3: In the results, the statistical results of many data are listed, but each result lacks corresponding discussion and result analysis.

Question4: In the discussion, an analytical framework for the evaluation of the equity of the layout of community home care facilities under the perspective of mobility is provided, however, this part is basically the result of some qualitative analysis, lack of quantitative data discussion.

Question5: In the conclusion, this paper constructs an evaluation framework for the equity of the layout of community home care facilities, however, the conclusion part is too long, some descriptions can be put into other modules in the paper.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Equity in walking access to community home care facility resources for elderly with different mobility: A case study of Lianhu District, Xi'an

PONE-D-22-19730R1

Dear Dr. Lu,

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.

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Kind regards,

Quan Yuan, Ph.D.

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

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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

Reviewer #2: Partly

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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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: No

Reviewer #2: No

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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

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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 revised paper has responded my concerns and addressed the proposed comments and suggestion. I recommend this paper for publication.

Reviewer #2: I have no other comments, the authors have answered my questions very well, I hope this manuscript can be accepted.

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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

Reviewer #2: No

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