Dietary practices, physical activity and social determinants of non-communicable diseases in Nepal: A systemic analysis

Sudesh Sharma; Anna Matheson; Danielle Lambrick; James Faulkner; David W. Lounsbury; Abhinav Vaidya; Rachel Page

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0281355

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionApril 30, 2021
14 Sep 2021 Decision Letter - Maria G Grammatikopoulou, Editor PONE-D-21-14408Dietary practices, physical activity and social determinants of non-communicable diseases in Nepal: a systemic analysisPLOS ONE Dear Dr. Sharma, 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 Oct 29 2021 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, Maria G Grammatikopoulou Academic Editor 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 2. We noted in your submission details that a portion of your manuscript may have been presented or published elsewhere. [This article is different from a related published (https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12889-020-09446-2) article in terms of findings and discussion. Since the article is based on my PhD thesis, articles that have been published (or will be published) have similar methods section (and hence the use of same figure relating to methodology and study framework).] Please clarify whether this [conference proceeding or publication] was peer-reviewed and formally published. If this work was previously peer-reviewed and published, in the cover letter please provide the reason that this work does not constitute dual publication and should be included in the current manuscript. 3. PLOS requires an ORCID iD for the corresponding author in Editorial Manager on papers submitted after December 6th, 2016. Please ensure that you have an ORCID iD and that it is validated in Editorial Manager. To do this, go to ‘Update my Information’ (in the upper left-hand corner of the main menu), and click on the Fetch/Validate link next to the ORCID field. This will take you to the ORCID site and allow you to create a new iD or authenticate a pre-existing iD in Editorial Manager. Please see the following video for instructions on linking an ORCID iD to your Editorial Manager account: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xcclfuvtxQ 4. 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. [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: Partly Reviewer #2: Yes ******** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: Yes 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: No 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: This is a very interesting and mostly well-written paper. The authors utilize appropriate methods to draw their conclusions Some minor comments 1. Please consider using sex instead of gender, given you did not record one's gender. In case you measured one's gender, this should be more clearly presented in the methods 2. The manuscript requires some English editing 3. Avoid using terms such as "causal relattionship", "influence" etc. Given your study design cannot support these claims, please replace with association etc Reviewer #2: Very timely and useful research. Probably, on of the most critical public health issue of our time is the growing burden of non-communicable disease. Most of these diseases are preventable and heavily dependent on behavior change. Changing people’s behavior requires a thorough understanding of the root causes of behaviors and health system-related structural issue and the interlinkages with social-determinants of health leading to NCDs. The authors clearly described and organized their findings along these lines. Just two question. 1. Why were the study areas purposively selected? What was the rational for this judgment sampling rather than random selection? Was it to save time? I understand the application of the method to identify participants within the selected communities, as you stated because of their knowledge and experience. But, why were the communities selected through this method? 2. Most of the findings do not seem new. It would be helpful, if the authors emphasized on what is the key new knowledge versus what was already known. For example, we know urbanization, increasing availability and consumption of junk food, alcohol consumption, smoking and reduced physical activities are risk factors for NCDs. Is the key on the findings the Nepalese context? ****** 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: No Reviewer #2: 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.] 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.0281355.r001
Revision 1
12 May 2022 Author Response Response to reviewers 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 - Thank you for your suggestion. We have reviewed and reformatted the manuscript as per the PLOS ONE style. 2. We noted in your submission details that a portion of your manuscript may have been presented or published elsewhere. [This article is different from a related published (https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12889-020-09446-2) article in terms of findings and discussion. Since the article is based on my PhD thesis, articles that have been published (or will be published) have similar methods section (and hence the use of same figure relating to methodology and study framework).] Please clarify whether this [conference proceeding or publication] was peer-reviewed and formally published. If this work was previously peer-reviewed and published, in the cover letter please provide the reason that this work does not constitute dual publication and should be included in the current manuscript. - This is the second paper from the PhD thesis and includes results about diet and physical activity. The first paper concentrated on results from the PhD focussing on tobacco and alcohol use (https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12889-020-09446-2) which has been peer-reviewed and published. Since the first published paper and this paper on diet and physical activity are from the first authors PhD thesis, we have used and referenced figures relating to the methods and study framework from the published paper in the submitted paper focusing on diet and physical activity. The introduction, findings and discussion are entirely different to the published paper and have not been published elsewhere and hence, we do not feel this constitutes dual publication. . 3. PLOS requires an ORCID iD for the corresponding author in Editorial Manager on papers submitted after December 6th, 2016. Please ensure that you have an ORCID iD and that it is validated in Editorial Manager. To do this, go to ‘Update my Information’ (in the upper left-hand corner of the main menu), and click on the Fetch/Validate link next to the ORCID field. This will take you to the ORCID site and allow you to create a new iD or authenticate a pre-existing iD in Editorial Manager. Please see the following video for instructions on linking an ORCID iD to your Editorial Manager account: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xcclfuvtxQ - ORCID ID of the corresponding author (SS): https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7880-5517 4. 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 reference list has been reviewed and is complete and correct. [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: Partly Reviewer #2: Yes Thank you for considering our manuscript as scientifically and technically sound. ________________________________________ 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: N/A We agree that statistical analysis is not applicable for this study. ________________________________________ 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: No Reviewer #2: Yes We agree with reviewer 1 that still there is limitation in data availability and have shared that with editors. We are in the process of making data available public once we review the transcripts and make sure all personal identifiers of the respondents are removed, as Nepal is a small country and participants from policy level are easily identified. We hope to make the data publicly available by this year. ________________________________________ 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 Thank you. ________________________________________ 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 is a very interesting and mostly well-written paper. The authors utilize appropriate methods to draw their conclusions Some minor comments 1. Please consider using sex instead of gender, given you did not record one's gender. In case you measured one's gender, this should be more clearly presented in the methods - Thank you for your kind suggestion and we agree that we have not measured gender within this paper. However, gender reflects socially constructed characteristics of male and female. We have indeed provided some context such as Nepal being patriarchal society and having more social and economic power as a breadwinner of the family. Also, our findings and discussion are linking those gendered experiences with diet and physical activity related practices. Thus, we feel that it makes more sense if we keep the term “gender” within the manuscript. 2. The manuscript requires some English editing - The English has been reviewed by co-authors who are native English speakers. 3. Avoid using terms such as "causal relationship", "influence" etc. Given your study design cannot support these claims, please replace with association etc - Thank you for your kind suggestion. We have revised and replaced “causal relationship” with “association” accordingly. However, the term “Causal Loop Diagrams” is a standard method/tool name and we have not changed it. Also, as this is a qualitative study, keeping “influence(s)” made more sense (qualitative term) than replacing with “association” (quantitative term) and hence have decided to keep the term “influence (s)” as it is. Reviewer #2: Very timely and useful research. Probably, on of the most critical public health issue of our time is the growing burden of non-communicable disease. Most of these diseases are preventable and heavily dependent on behavior change. Changing people’s behavior requires a thorough understanding of the root causes of behaviors and health system-related structural issue and the interlinkages with social-determinants of health leading to NCDs. The authors clearly described and organized their findings along these lines. Just two question. 1. Why were the study areas purposively selected? What was the rational for this judgment sampling rather than random selection? Was it to save time? I understand the application of the method to identify participants within the selected communities, as you stated because of their knowledge and experience. But, why were the communities selected through this method? - This is a qualitative study and often, cases are purposively chosen. In the study, the main purpose was to choose different context i.e. urban, semi-urban and rural settings, and was also selected in consultation with District Health Offices. Time and convenience of the first author (principal investigator) also influenced the choice of districts which is acceptable in purposive sampling. In qualitative studies, often random sampling is not the choice of sampling. 2. Most of the findings do not seem new. It would be helpful, if the authors emphasized on what is the key new knowledge versus what was already known. For example, we know urbanization, increasing availability and consumption of junk food, alcohol consumption, smoking and reduced physical activities are risk factors for NCDs. Is the key on the findings the Nepalese context? - The findings are especially important in Nepalese context where the focus is on changing behaviour. Yes, the findings may not be new for high-income countries but, for low income countries like Nepal, the authors hope that this paper can provide a whole new way of seeing a public health issue, taking a systems perspective and designing appropriate actions. This paper provides qualitative evidence on social determinants of dietary and physical activity practices which is very scarce in Nepalese (or low income country) and we hope that this provides some systemic insights for actions by concerned health agencies in Nepal. ________________________________________ 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: No Reviewer #2: 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.] 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. ________________________________________ In compliance with data protection regulations, you may request that we remove your personal registration details at any time. (Remove my information/details). Please contact the publication office if you have any questions. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: 220511 Ethics response.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0281355.r002
25 Oct 2022 Decision Letter - Sandra Boatemaa Kushitor, Editor PONE-D-21-14408R1Dietary practices, physical activity and social determinants of non-communicable diseases in Nepal: a systemic analysisPLOS ONE Dear Dr. Sharma, 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 09 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, Sandra Boatemaa Kushitor, Ph.D. 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: Abstract Incomplete sentence, add diet and physical activity after determinants ....interactions of the social determinants .... Can the authors provide how this can be achieved: The health system has potential to play a more effective role in the prevention of the behavioural and social determinants of NCDs. I have made a few comments. [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 #3: (No Response) ******** 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 #3: Yes ****** 3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #3: 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 #3: 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 #3: 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 #3: (No Response) ****** 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 #3: Yes: Dr. Krishna Paudel ******** [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: PONE-D-21-14408_diet paper.pdf https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0281355.r003
Revision 2
9 Dec 2022 Author Response We would like to thank reviewers for their helpful suggestions and feedback for improving the manuscript. We authors have reviewed and checked the references and links and have addressed the comments as follows: Abstract Incomplete sentence, add diet and physical activity after determinants ....interactions of the social determinants .... - We have added “of NCDs” as we are being consistent throughout the article. Can the authors provide how this can be achieved: The health system has potential to play a more effective role in the prevention of the behavioural and social determinants of NCDs. - This statement is from abstract. We authors have elaborated this in the conclusion section. As indicated within the paper, curative orientation and health system management issues as well as political and commercial influences outside of the health system are creating systemic barriers for effective multi-sectoral action for the prevention of NCDs risk factors. The first and most important shift needed is creating and resourcing an appropriate prevention structure (a national centre) for acclerating actions on the SDH. I have made a few comments (as HTML markup) - Thank you for your suggestion. We authors have reviewed and revised the manuscript as per HTML markup as follows: - Line 7 strikeout: changed percentage and statement so that the contrasting argument is more clearer i.e. “but 97% had adequate physical activity” - Line 10: deleted as suggested i.e. “indicating the shifts towards physical inactivity in Nepal” - Line 53-59: As suggested, further clarified rationale for selecting the districts i.e. “The study was conducted in Nepal from July until October 2016. While there was limited district specific data on the prevalance of NCDs, the nation surveys showed an increasing trend in both urban and rural areas throughout Nepal [4, 28]. Two districts (Bhaktapur and Morang) were purposively selected as case districts, based on first author’s prior relationships with respective district health offices and place. In particular, the first author is from Morang and his motivation to study about social determinants of NCDs grew from his personal experience of observing family and wider community being impacted by NCDs.” - Line 170: Nepali term “Dhido” explained within large bracket i.e. “thick porridge made from corn or buckwheat flour” Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to reviewers.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0281355.r004
23 Jan 2023 Decision Letter - Sandra Boatemaa Kushitor, Editor Dietary practices, physical activity and social determinants of non-communicable diseases in Nepal: a systemic analysis PONE-D-21-14408R2 Dear Dr. Sharma, 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, Sandra Boatemaa Kushitor, Ph.D. Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): Reviewers' comments: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0281355.r005
Formally Accepted
26 Jan 2023 Acceptance Letter - Sandra Boatemaa Kushitor, Editor PONE-D-21-14408R2 Dietary practices, physical activity and social determinants of non-communicable diseases in Nepal: a systemic analysis Dear Dr. Sharma: 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. Sandra Boatemaa Kushitor Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0281355.r006

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