As a starting point, all experts received the selected topic sketches in alphabetic order and were requested to nominate the most relevant topics (in their opinion) on a scale from 0 (irrelevant) to 3 (relevant), whereby each expert could allocate points up to a maximum of number of topics*1,5).
Each region was requested to nominate one competent medical officer to be the regional principal investigator (RPIs).
Directors of occupational therapy and clinical education support officers across metropolitan, regional, and rural Hospital and Health Services were contacted and requested to nominate potential participants for the interviews.
Secondly, the chief directors of the selected province-level CDCs were requested to nominate two counties in their jurisdiction, one representing the good county-level performance of communicable disease surveillance and the other one representing the weak performance.
Methodology To assess the range of clinic services across districts, DHMT staff were requested to nominate high- and low-performing services in their area and develop a program for the team to visit these centres.
In order to determine the salience of mental health disorders, and depression in particular, as health issues, respondents are requested to nominate the main causes of death or disability in their country from a list of general health problem categories, a list of specific illness and injuries and a list of mental health problems.
In the e-mail, the purpose of the research was explained and a request for participants to nominate other known colleagues involved in PMTCT programmes in their or other SSA countries was made.
Initially we requested the organisations to nominate professional leaders as representatives.
Question 5 was open-ended and requested the researcher to nominate the most suitable outcome measure pertaining to their research field.
The CHMT members requested each group to nominate one person who would be invited in the district annual planning and budgeting process.
