WHO Thematic Platform for Health Emergency and Disaster Risk Management Research Network (TPRN): Report of the Kobe Expert Meeting

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

A well-written manuscript addressing a significant public health and emergency response issue. The results from the experts' meeting are sound and I only have minor suggestions as listed below:

1. In the area 3 c): the authors stated "

c) What data technology is needed for risk communication, emergency response and

research design? 

What do you mean "data technology"? Do you mean "Data and technology"?

Also in this section, I was wondering whether you are going to explore what the effective and localised risk communication approach to meet the requirements from local community?

2. Area 4: Health workforce development for health emergency and disaster risk management. Do you also want to mention the in-house training/professional development and their interaction with other stakeholders?

Author Response

Point-by-point response to peer-review comments

A well-written manuscript addressing a significant public health and emergency response issue. The results from the experts' meeting are sound and I only have minor suggestions as listed below:

1. In the area 3 c): the authors stated "

c) What data technology is needed for risk communication, emergency response and research design? 

What do you mean "data technology"? Do you mean "Data and technology"?

Thank you for your comment. We meant the technology for information and data management and communication. We modified the sentence of the manuscript reflecting this point.  (table Area 3)

Also in this section, I was wondering whether you are going to explore what the effective and localised risk communication approach to meet the requirements from local community?

Thank you very much for your comment. Yes, our discussion also focused on how to meet the local requirement through using newly available technology. (line 112-113)

2. Area 4: Health workforce development for health emergency and disaster risk management. Do you also want to mention the in-house training/professional development and their interaction with other stakeholders?

Yes, we identified the gaps in common understanding in relevant knowledge and competencies required for Health EDRM workforce as well as the contents for in-house training/professional development and their interaction with stakeholders. We reflected this point in the revised version (line 116-118)

Reviewer 2 Report

The summary of this meeting provides no detail on number of participants, the basis of their selection as the experts to identify these research priorities (aside from institutional affiliations), and no apparent methodology. “Preliminary” literature review and expert opinion do not form the basis of defining research priorities for an entire field. I encourage the group to 1) diversify its participants, 2. Define the methodology to be used to prioritize using a scientific basis. For example, consider using the RAND/UCLA Delphi Method to determine appropriate research agendas and areas to be explored; or another scientifically validated method.

Author Response

The summary of this meeting provides no detail on number of participants, the basis of their selection as the experts to identify these research priorities (aside from institutional affiliations), and no apparent methodology. “Preliminary” literature review and expert opinion do not form the basis of defining research priorities for an entire field. I encourage the group to 1) diversify its participants, 2. Define the methodology to be used to prioritize using a scientific basis. For example, consider using the RAND/UCLA Delphi Method to determine appropriate research agendas and areas to be explored; or another scientifically validated method. 

Thank you very much for your important comments and suggestions. Responding to your comments, we added a section about methods. Please see section 2 and Section 5 (description in red color).

Reviewer 3 Report

The current manuscript requires major revision to be published in International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health.

1.    This commentary summarizes what was discussed and suggested during a research meeting on health emergency and disaster management.

2.    This commentary requires to describe how and why these research areas and questions were selected and drawn from discussions among the participants. That is, i) the method of deriving these research agendas and themes from this meeting and ii) what gaps in research between current studies and future research needs suggested from this meeting could be filled should be elaborated on.

3.    Section for “3. Follow up actions” needs to be organized according to the five key research areas more specifically.

4.    In References, the 4^th and 5^th literature should show regular volume, issue, and pages numbers as published in the academic journals, rather than their URLs.

Author Response

The current manuscript requires major revision to be published in International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health.

1.    This commentary summarizes what was discussed and suggested during a research meeting on health emergency and disaster management.

2.    This commentary requires to describe how and why these research areas and questions were selected and drawn from discussions among the participants. That is, i) the method of deriving these research agendas and themes from this meeting and ii) what gaps in research between current studies and future research needs suggested from this meeting could be filled should be elaborated on.

Thank you very much for your important comment and suggestions. We added a section about the methods. Please see section 2.

3.    Section for “3. Follow up actions” needs to be organized according to the five key research areas more specifically.

Thank you very much for your comment.

We added description about potential specific actions for each area based on the other 5 theme-based articles on the same edition of the journal (2 were already accepted, 3 are under revision process for peer-review comments). In this summary article, we introduce the key elements of the actions and the greater details are addressed in those theme-based articles. Please see section 4.

4.    In References, the 4^th and 5^th literature should show regular volume, issue, and pages numbers as published in the academic journals, rather than their URLs.

Thank you very much for your suggestion. It is corrected accordingly.

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors have provided several improvements in response to the initial review. I would suggest that a Section entitled Limitations be included that acknowledges the absence of a research methodology or systematic approach to the "consultations" or expert meetings. 

The research questions identified in these expert meetings and consultations do not have any apparent underlying methodology for their selection - aside from people ("experts") gathering in a room and having an apparently unstructured discussion, or a discussion for which the structure remains undefined in the article.The resultant research priorities - for all we know as readers - may easily have been drawn at random from a hat by the convened experts, or may have been selected on the basis of specific rational criteria (unlikely based on the presentation of methodology), or easily could reflect pre-existent biases and interests of people in the room. We shall never know, in the absence of actual scientific methodology and a rationally described approach for developing the questions that provides greater detail than, in essence, "the experts we chose gathered and selected questions". 

The English subject-verb agreement, and article usage in the areas in red print would seemingly benefit from further editorial review and revision. 

The Limitations Section should identify the following MAJOR limitations: 

There was no scientific methodology to the selection of the research questions (no formal analysis of gaps in research; no data collection or analysis of the opinions of the assembled experts; no formal use of published expert-opinion prioritization protocols or research methodologies such as the RAND-UCLA Delphi Method to inform selection of the research questions); 

Soliciting and documenting the results of unstructured expert discussions and opinions - without any qualitative or quantitative data collection or analysis from the discussions - does not represent a systematic or scientific approach to hypothesis generation or to defining research questions for an entire field of inquiry; 

Reviewer 3 Report

The authors have incorporated all the comments well.