Review for 10.1186/s12876-022-02307-9 (2022)

Reviewer’s report
Title: 
Multimodal Intervention to Improve the Transition of Patients with
Inflammatory Bowel Disease from Pediatric to Adult Care: Protocol for a
randomized controlled trial
Version: 
0 
Date: 
22 Feb 2022
Reviewer's report:
A well written manuscript on a much-needed topic and plans for a RCT on
pediatric to adult transition in patients with IBD.
I have a few queries:
1. In one of the supplemental materials you have the Spirit checklist, yet you
don't refer to this in the manuscript. 
Is there a reason why you don't include this?
2. Inclusion criteria: you choose to enroll adolescents ages 16-17.5. 
This seems
quite a narrow range. 
For example, why not to age 18? It seems the transition to
adult care would be more than 6 months after enrollment, correct? 
And why not
age 15-17.5? Seems like a sentence of justification would support your choice.
3. 
Are all the assessments and questionnaires delivered through Red Cap? Please
clarify.
4. Is the structured transition to an adult provider presumed to occur at a certain
time in the study or time related to age? Please clarify.
5. The control group, you have 5 processes to implement. 
Are these all standard
of care? Please clarify.
6. In stage 1, implementation planning, is the worksheet generated by the
implementation game, reviewed by the research team? Please clarify
7. Under primary outcome- if the primary outcome is the score on the IBD-DI, is
the goal to see a decrease in the score? Any specific decrease, like 10%? Please
clarify.
8. under secondary clinical outcomes, you are looking at remission rates. 
How
are you assessing remission rates? And are you comparing them to controls? You
mention Table 1, but that table does not have remission rates, rather it has
disease activity measures. 
Can you clarify this?
9. Under secondary clinical outcomes, for health services utilization and costs,
again you mention "maintaining good health" but your measures seem to be
hospitalization rates, etc. 
Can you clarify this?
10. In the discussion section, I would have liked to see some reference back to
the literature, of which there is none. 
Please comment on how your results will fit
with or enhance, existing literature on the topic.
11. 
In the discussion section, page 20, line 462, consider deleting the "thus" in
the sentence.
12. 
Under l/imitations, you correctly identify that attrition may be an issue.
However, it is not clear what you mean by "the transition navigators will be
aware of the concern and use more provider-initiated interactions to sustain
adherence and engagement" What might these be? Please clarify/explain.
13. 
Since this is a protocol for an upcoming intervention, what is it that you want
the reader to take home from reading this manuscript, if published? 
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Is the study design appropriate to answer the research question (including the use
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