Dear Dr. Johnson-Peretz,

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Richard Makurumidze

Academic Editor

PLOS One

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Partly

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? -->?>

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: N/A

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

The PLOS Data policy

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: No

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Reviewer #1: Overall, the writing is acceptable. The manuscript adheres to acceptable technical standards. The data support the conclusions.

The title needs to be revised as it doesn't quite reflect the content. Perhaps "Perceptions and feelings of participants..." would be preferable to "Perspectives of participants..."

Explain what you mean in Table 1, specifically the row concerning arm and its control and intervention modalities.

Explain Table S1 more clearly and provide relevant details to enhance understanding of the methodology and facilitate comprehension for readers.

Review the numbering of titles and subtitles in the results section (for example, 1.0, 1.1, and directly 1.2.1, among others). This inconsistency makes it difficult to follow the chronological order of your results. The same applies to line 258.

For the discussion, a more thorough restructuring will be necessary, and I suggest starting with the limitations of your study (lines 498 to 505 should be placed first).

Also, create a section on ethical considerations and ethical approval immediately following the methodology.

Reviewer #2: Dear Author,

Thank you for looking this important topic of great interest.

Please find my comments in the attached documments and below:

Ln 7 :Better specify the number of months or range of months.

Ln31:" Suppressed"

Ln:54-66:Patient-Centred care is an holistic care model in consultation with well defined elements : 1.Exploring both disease and illness experiences . 2. Understanding the whole person. 3. Finding the common ground. 4 Enhancing pateint-Doctor relationship. 5 Incorporating prevention and health care promotion. 6. Being realistic.

Preferences come under understanding the whole person including their context.

Please look into these components of the Patient-Centered care and rephrase this section in a way to remove adjectival impressions and foster your primary intentions of PCC on mobile PWHIV .

Ln83 :replace with "and to"

Ln84-86:Reconstitute this as a separate statement please.

Ln88:This "Method" contains useful information to understand the purpose of your study and context but, unfortunately, still not optimal in research requirement.

1. The inclusion/exclusion criteria of your purposive /judgmental samples is very important.

2. Is disease prevalence the only factor in deciding the clinics from which the participants were extracted?

Ln91:Follow this by mentioning the sectoral involvements e.g : "multisectoral stategy of HIV Medical officers and psychologist to reach...."

Table 1: I am unclear about this section and it is inconsistent with what you have been discussing so far .

Do you mean that some participants do not receive the treatment?

Are you doing a clinical trial or what ?

Ln140:Please keep to a particular form of incorporating the verbatim quotes.

I prefer a complete separation from the lead-in paragraph because of the grammatical errors that might be in the verbatim quotes.

Kindly correct this

Ln184-185: Isolate this as participant's response and start another paragraph/ statement after that

Ln195-196:Replace with " Overall, Patient-Clients liked being asked about their mobility plans because it gave them a chance to work with the provider and strategise support for ART adherence as expressed by similar views from different participants from two different sites":

Ln219-220:Replace with " Knowledge gap was identified between CD4 count and Viral load as expressed by a participant and a corrective information by a mobility coordinator" :

Ln238-240:Replace with : Having adequate knowledge about Viral load, adherence and health outcomes was reported to have a positive motivating impacts on the treatment compliance of the participants.

Ln252:put :that

Ln253:put:Participants

Ln253:as shown in the context of.....

Ln258-260: The three to six month chronic medication refill time introduced during the Covid 19 pandemic reduced the in-facility congestion, but the longer refill time introduced in this study achieved other additional benefits ranging from .......

Ln269-270:The stigma associated with recurrent clinic visits as HIV patient has been reduced by a longer refill time introduced in this study

Ln327-328: What exactly are you trying to say here?

Ln357:This terms are reserved for experimental studies or a mixed method research in which probably there may be an interview of participants in each of the groups.

Ln364: Providers were satisfied that six-month refill time and telephonic conversation with the participants were valuable in their care :

Ln374-376:How is this verbatim quote relevant to mobility conversation?

Ln378-379:Do you want to say that both men and women's packs were popular ?

Ln440: This could be in form of monetary assistance for small businesses or tokens to augment their low earnings.

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what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

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Reviewer #1: Yes: KETEHOUNDJE Désiré

Reviewer #2: Yes: Adeloye Amoo Adeniji (MBBS; MMed; FCFP; FACRRM)

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NAAS will assess whether your figures meet our technical requirements by comparing each figure against our figure specifications.

Attachments

Attachment

Submitted filename: PONE-D-25-64298.pdf

Dear Dr. Johnson-Peretz,

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 Jul 26 2026 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.

• A 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.

As the corresponding author, your ORCID iD is verified in the submission system and will appear in the published article. PLOS supports the use of ORCID, and we encourage all coauthors to register for an ORCID iD and use it as well. Please encourage your coauthors to verify their ORCID iD within the submission system before final acceptance, as unverified ORCID iDs will not appear in the published article. Only  the individual author can complete the verification step; PLOS staff cannot  verify ORCID iDs on behalf of authors.

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Richard Makurumidze

Academic Editor

PLOS One

Journal Requirements:

If the reviewer comments include a recommendation to cite specific previously published works, please review and evaluate these publications to determine whether they are relevant and should be cited. There is no requirement to cite these works unless the editor has indicated otherwise.

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.

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

Reviewer #1: (No Response)

Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed

**********

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

Reviewer #1: Partly

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

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

Reviewer #1: N/A

Reviewer #2: N/A

**********

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

The PLOS Data policy

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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Reviewer #1: The topic is interesting.

Thank you for the clarifications provided.

A few comments regarding the answers provided and to improve the quality of your work:

1. I was unable to access the supplementary table S1 (line 146) (which is part of the additional information to be provided in the appendix).

2. Lines 3-4: We sought to explore participant perceptions of a patient-centered model aimed at enhancing care engagement through ‘dynamic choice’ treatment services for mobile individuals.

What distinction do you make between "Participant perspectives" (used in the title of your research) and "Participant perceptions" (used here in line 3)?

I believe the suggestion I made to you addresses this point and emphasizes the importance of maintaining the parallel structure and the appropriate word choice. I note a fundamental difference between perceptions and perspectives, unless I am mistaken.

3. Lines 104-105: I think It is necessary and preferable to provide details within this manuscript, rather than referencing another article, to ensure precision and clarity. This would be the ideal time to fully explain the type of your study and its specific characteristics.

Best regards, and may you find the observations helpful.

Reviewer #2: Dear Author ,

Thank you for this very important study of great importance and relevance ,especially, in sub-saharan Africa.

You have responded to my concerns appropriately .

Simple observation and comment about N and n as in the manuscript attached .

Review this in the Abstract, tables and wherever applicable in the manuscript.

Best of Luck

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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: KETEHOUNDJE Désiré

Reviewer #2: Yes: Adeloye Amoo Adeniji (MBBS; MMed; FCFP; FACRRM)

**********

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

To ensure your figures meet our technical requirements, please review our figure guidelines: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/figures

You may also use PLOS’s free figure tool, NAAS, to help you prepare publication quality figures: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/figures#loc-tools-for-figure-preparation.

NAAS will assess whether your figures meet our technical requirements by comparing each figure against our figure specifications.

Attachments

Attachment

Submitted filename: Research manuscript.pdf

Participant perspectives on a person-centred care model for mobile individuals in HIV care from the SEARCH Dynamic Choice Treatment trial in rural Kenya and Uganda

PONE-D-25-64298R2

Dear Dr. Johnson-Peretz,

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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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,

Richard Makurumidze

Academic Editor

PLOS One

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

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??>

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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Reviewer #1: The answers given are adequate. I have no further observations.

Reviewer #2: Thank you for the round of review.

I think my major concerns had been satisfactorily addressed.

The issue of N and n also depend's on publishing Journal's requirement and i hope the Editor will use his discretion in this regard.

Good luck

**********

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: KETEHOUNDJE Désiré

Reviewer #2: Yes: Adeloye Amoo Adeniji (MBBS;MMed; FCFP; FACRRM)

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