Peer Review History

Original SubmissionJune 12, 2020
Decision Letter - Nickolas D. Zaller, Editor

PONE-D-20-18035

The Social Network of Medical Case Managers, Housing Providers, and Health Department Staff in the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program: A Midwest Case Study

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Lightner,

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We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Nickolas D. Zaller

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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RAND Corporation

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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: I Don't Know

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: No

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 is an interesting study. I am not well-versed in social network analysis (although I am interested) so I cannot confirm the appropriateness or accuracy of the analytical techniques employed (i.e. network composition scores and/or ERGM), but if the results are accurately presented then I support acceptance of your paper. However, this recommendation comes with some required edits. Your data and results are unique to the city and/or state represented. This is implied early in the paper but needs to be addressed throughout. Thus, you must change this statement in the beginning of the discussion (pg 10, lines 157-8) to read, "This study aimed to show the role of health department staff in care coordination for HIV treatment in a Midwest city." And change the following sentence to read, "We assessed a single Ryan White funded area..." I am confident you would have different results if data were collected from my state which also has a state health dept serving as a hub for HIV programs.

Reviewer #2: This study presents the social network analysis among Ryan White case managers, housing providers, and health department staff and indicates that health department staff had a wider social network across the HIV/AIDS service system.

1. The author should provide the number of invitations sent out for each role and whether the response rates varied by roles. This information is critical to test whether selection bias existed in this study. If the author had demographic characteristics of all invited individual. It will strengthen this study by exploring associations between demographics and response to survey.

2. Please test the normality of reported network compositions. If they are not normal distributed, Kruskal–Wallis test (rank test) should be used. Median and interquartile range should be reported instead of mean and stand deviation.

3. In the ERGM analysis, race/ethnicity should be added as a model covariate.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Revision 1

Thank you for providing feedback on this manuscript. We have incorporate all feedback. A detailed description of each point is presented in the response to reviewers document that has been uploaded.

Attachments
Attachment
Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers.docx
Decision Letter - Nickolas D. Zaller, Editor

The Social Network of Medical Case Managers, Housing Providers, and Health Department Staff in the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program: A Midwest Case Study

PONE-D-20-18035R1

Dear Dr. Lightner,

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,

Nickolas D. Zaller

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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: (No Response)

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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: (No Response)

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

Reviewer #1: I Don't Know

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

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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: Yes

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

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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: (No Response)

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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 revisions have satisfied my comments/suggestions. I do not have any additional comments or revisions.

Reviewer #2: Authors have addressed all my concerns about statistical analysis. They conducted normality tests and used median and Internationale range to present their data. They also add race/ethnic into their final model.

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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

Formally Accepted
Acceptance Letter - Nickolas D. Zaller, Editor

PONE-D-20-18035R1

The Social Network of Medical Case Managers, Housing Providers, and Health Department Staff in the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program: A Midwest Case Study

Dear Dr. Lightner:

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. Nickolas D. Zaller

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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