Reviewer's report
Title:Developing a gender-based approach to chronic conditions and women's
health: a qualitative investigation of community-dwelling women and service
provider perspectives
Version:2Date:23 September 2014
Reviewer: Ingrid Hellstrom
Reviewer's report:
This is an interesting and well-written paper on women’s health, which is an
important subject that has clear implication in clinical practice. I will recommend
this paper for publication (after revision) and I have some comments and
suggestions for revisions, which I think will strengthen the paper.
Minor Essential Revisions:
1. Minor comment: row 86 NWS? (I suppose it should be the New South Wales)
2. Minor comment: row 746 – NGO?
3. Rows 137-138 – why remove identifying features before analysis? Do you
mean that you removed for example information about working places? From my
point of view, this could inform the analysis.
Major Essential Revisions:
1. Row 128-129 “literature review”. It is an unclear statement. In this article?
Looking in the reference list, I can note what there a no study on women’s
experiences within the health care system in the Background section. Could this
be added? Or are there no studies?
2. I miss a description of the main study in this section. As a reader you get this
information under Acknowledgement. Now it raises questions such as – is this
the first phase of a larger study when you seek a broad overview of the area?
3. Rows 156-157 “…verification and clarification of themes emerging from the
data.” Which were the themes? Please, also see under Findings and Discussion
below.
4. Included participants: I miss information about the informants in the focus
groups in the methods section. As I understand, the women attended community
health centers, but did they all have chronic conditions, or did they talk about
experiences for example when accompanying a relative or a friend. And
regarding the professional stakeholders, are they all women or are some of them
men? This information does not diminish the findings but it will enhance the
trustworthiness. It is a difference if the informants give an outsider-perspective (cf
rows 322-325) on the area, or if they have the experience themselves. (Rows
161-164 could be moved to the Methods section).
Discretionary Revisions:
Findings and Discussion: This part is interesting to read. However, I think it will
be strengthening if it could be more synthesized and focused in line with the
aims. It would be helpful to present the themes and categories for the reader. As
it stands now, it looks like that each sub-heading is one discrete category, but
how about Insights from professional stakeholders regarding the profession and
system (row 690) – is this a theme? However, if the overall aim of this sub-study
is to get an overview of the area, this will work, but the authors need to be more
explicit about this fact.
Level of interest: An article whose findings are important to those with closely
related research interests
Quality of written English: Acceptable
Statistical review: No, the manuscript does not need to be seen by a statistician.
Declaration of competing interests:
'I declare that I have no competing interests'