Organisation of primary health care in the Asia-Pacific region: developing a prioritised research agenda

Palagyi, Anna; Dodd, Rebecca; Jan, Stephen; Nambiar, Devaki; Joshi, Rohina; Tian, Maoyi; Abimbola, Seye; Peiris, David

PHASe II: modIfIed delPHI exerCISe An expert panel was convened via email in April to June 2018. We aimed to recruit stakeholders from government, aid/development organisations, academic institutions and civil society from a broad sample of Asia-Pacific LMICs, to seek their perspectives on, and prioritisation of, PHC research gaps. Stakeholders were identified through the authors' existing networks and snowball sampling. Despite the authors' strong network of China stakeholders, we discovered just prior to the initiation of the eDelphi exercise that firewall restrictions would preclude access to the survey website for China-based participants. Because of time constraints in administering the three rounds of the Delphi, we were unable to rebuild the survey using local Chinese online survey software. An iterative prioritisation process was undertaken, involving three rounds of web-based survey using a web-based data collection tool (Research Electronic Data Capture). This virtual method of expert engagement has been successfully applied elsewhere and is applicable where Delphi panel members are geographically dispersed. 24 25 We recruited 22 participants to the expert panel (179 email invitations sent; 13% response rate). These included representatives from seven LMICs of the Asia-Pacific region, and seven individuals working across regional PHC programmes (table 1) . Panel members were asked to complete each Delphi round within 10 days with automated email reminders prior to each round closing. A copy of the Delphi questionnaire is provided in online supplementary file 3; an overview of the three rounds is outlined here.