Table 1 A staged approach to the synthesis of practice-based case studies on COVID community champions
Stages [37] | Community champions synthesis |
|---|---|
(i) Identify or develop a conceptual framework that helps define, categorise and select interventions of interest | Community champions are part of Public Health England’s family of community-centred approaches [13]. The rapid review, published by PHE in 2021 [17], identified types of champion approaches in UK public health practice |
(ii) Identify websites and case study collections | The LGA COVID Community Champion collection comprised 13 case studies. A further three were identified through searching the LGA COVID-19 Learning Exchange (now Public Health Learning Exchange) |
(iii) Search and select case studies that group round a topic or intervention approach | LGA COVID community champion case studies were written to a standard of reporting, containing common information fields. There was some variation as local approaches developed according to context and timing/stage of the pandemic |
(iv) Organise the case study data using a template with common fields/domains | A structured data extraction template was used to organise and display the data extracted from practice-based case studies. Common domains included aims, setting, approach, participants, activities, outcomes, influencing factors and learning |
(v) Use cross case analysis with matrices to develop the analysis and synthesis | Cross-case analysis was used to identify the patterns and differences between case studies, retaining the contextual information within individual cases. This stage used tables to summarise data, in line with framework analysis |
(vi) Develop an overarching framework that explains the data and can be adapted as more case studies are analysed | An overarching thematic framework was produced that provided a good fit with the data. The emerging findings were checked and rechecked against the case studies in an iterative process to refine the analysis. The final framework was as presented in tables, with a conceptual figure representing key programme features |
(vii) Write a narrative report of themes, with illustrative quotations alongside contextual information | The final stage was a narrative account of results and themes with quotations and/or practical examples |