Set When the Sun Rises, Rise When the Sun Sets: Climate Impact on Health, Safety, and Wellbeing of Smallholder Farmers in Vietnam

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The title of the manuscript may be rewritten without any full stops.

There is a mismatch between the sample size presented in the Abstract and Results i.e. whether it is 44 or 46. Moreover, the sample size is not sufficient for statistical analysis.

What about the Vietnam participants in Table 5, it is not clear.

Most robust study and analysis is required to further improve the quality of this manuscript.

I must reject it in the present form.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Needs to be improved

Author Response

The title of the manuscript may be rewritten without any full stops.

Response: We have removed the period from the title.

There is a mismatch between the sample size presented in the Abstract and Results i.e. whether it is 44 or 46. Moreover, the sample size is not sufficient for statistical analysis.

Response: Thank you, we have fixed a typo in the abstract. Regarding the statistical analysis, a sample size of 46 is sufficient for statistical summary and cross group comparisons of demographics. We did not make any statistical inference on the data.

What about the Vietnam participants in Table 5, it is not clear.

Response: There is no table 5 in the manuscript. All tables, with the exception of table 1 which is used to show the cards that were provided to the participants, are based on the responses from the participants.

Most robust study and analysis is required to further improve the quality of this manuscript.

Response: Upon the suggestion of another reviewer we have made clearer the theoretical framework to our study results.

I must reject it in the present form.

Response: Thank  you for taking the time to review this manuscript.

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The manuscript entitled “Set when the sun rises, rise when the sun sets: Climate impact on health, safety, and wellbeing of smallholder farmers in Vietnam” is the need of hour. It is a very well written manuscript with novelty. The manuscript emphasizes the need for capacity building for small holder farmers. Few minor points to be addressed before the manuscript is considered for publication.

1.      The discussion needs a bit more elaboration especially on the type of capacity building programs needed to make the small holders adapt to the situation. Also the discussion should also focus more on farmer’s friendly technologies to cope with heat stress.

2.      Tables need to be formatted properly to the journal's standard

3.      Figure 2 has a certain overlapping of text. This should be avoided. This figure needs fine-tuning to make it further attractive to readers

 

 

Author Response

The manuscript entitled “Set when the sun rises, rise when the sun sets: Climate impact on health, safety, and wellbeing of smallholder farmers in Vietnam” is the need of hour. It is a very well written manuscript with novelty. The manuscript emphasizes the need for capacity building for small holder farmers. Few minor points to be addressed before the manuscript is considered for publication.

1. The discussion needs a bit more elaboration especially on the type of capacity building programs needed to make the small holders adapt to the situation. Also the discussion should also focus more on farmer’s friendly technologies to cope with heat stress.

Response: Thank you for this review. We have elaborated in the discussion the need to take a community-based approach to the development of capacity building programs as we feel this must be tailored to the specific needs of each community. While we agree cooling technologies are one component of the approach, since one of the communities in our study did not identify heat as a pressing concern. we have chosen to leave the discussion broader. We feel the intervention needs to be tailored specifically to the community’s needs.

 

2. Tables need to be formatted properly to the journal's standard

Response: Thank you for this review. While we noted some odd spacing with the subsection heading after one of the tables, we are unclear what about the tables are not formatted correctly. According to the submission website, ‘All Figures, Schemes and Tables should have a short explanatory title and caption.

All table columns should have an explanatory heading. To facilitate the copy-editing of larger tables, smaller fonts may be used, but no less than 8 pt. in size. Authors should use the Table option of Microsoft Word to create tables.’ To the best of our understanding the current tables meet these requirements. Should this manuscript be accepted we will work with the publisher on any additional formatting requirements.

3. Figure 2 has a certain overlapping of text. This should be avoided. This figure needs fine-tuning to make it further attractive to readers

Response: Thank you for pointing this out. We agree. We have created an updated version and are including it in the resubmission.

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors Thank you for highlighting the importance of health and submitting this relevant paper.   To improve the paper, could you elaborate on the existing studies that focused on the climate-health nexus? You touch upon it but I think this needs to be expanded in the introduction. Additionally, the paper lacks a theoretical framework (eg. Social stress model; etc.). How did this inspire the “pile sorting” exercise and the vignettes?  Since you focused on a specific research group (I.e., people working in the non-formal sector), could you add an overview of studies that focused on this topic in the introduction section, to better frame the results or highlight its uniqueness.   Concerning the methodological approach: could you add some more reflexive notes? And a table including an overview of the participants (here and not in the results section?)   Results: you present a lot of results, however, I would prefer that you present them in a clearer way and discuss them more in depth and stress unique findings from the figures and the table.    Could you discuss the figure in the same section? (E.g. figure 2)   I would recommend to look closer at your data and present, in line with your theoretical framework, your findings in a more structured way. They seem interesting but it reads rather descriptive. For instance, the final section on trusted sources is rather short, can it be included elsewhere?    The abstract needs to cover more the content of the paper.

 

Author Response

Thank you for highlighting the importance of health and submitting this relevant paper.   To improve the paper, could you elaborate on the existing studies that focused on the climate-health nexus? You touch upon it but I think this needs to be expanded in the introduction.

Response: Thank you, we have included a larger discussion on the climate-health nexus.

Additionally, the paper lacks a theoretical framework (eg. Social stress model; etc.). How did this inspire the “pile sorting” exercise and the vignettes? 

Response: Thank you for pointing out that we did not explicitly name our theoretical model. We have included a description of our overall framework (Total Worker Health) starting on line 89.

Since you focused on a specific research group (I.e., people working in the non-formal sector), could you add an overview of studies that focused on this topic in the introduction section, to better frame the results or highlight its uniqueness.  

Response: Thank you, we have included a discussion specifically on the research gaps related to small holder farmers.

Concerning the methodological approach: could you add some more reflexive notes? And a table including an overview of the participants (here and not in the results section?) 

Response: We agree that reflexivity is an important component to qualitative research. We have made a note on line 204 as to our potential bias when creating the vignettes around heat and 212 regarding follow-up questions. We have chosen to keep the participant description in the results section. We do provide a summary of the general differences between the provinces in the methods. However, given our sample size we do not feel it would be appropriate to suggest that observed differences in our sample are representative of those provinces and feel that including it in the results is more appropriate.

Results: you present a lot of results, however, I would prefer that you present them in a clearer way and discuss them more in depth and stress unique findings from the figures and the table. Could you discuss the figure in the same section? (E.g. figure 2)  

Response: Thank you for this suggestion. While we did not reorganize the findings, we did tie portions of our findings back to the framework which we feel helps highlight the important findings. Additionally, in our discussion we highlighted the framework more.

I would recommend to look closer at your data and present, in line with your theoretical framework, your findings in a more structured way. They seem interesting but it reads rather descriptive. For instance, the final section on trusted sources is rather short, can it be included elsewhere?   

Response: Thank you for this recommendation. The goal of this paper was to identify how famers are thinking about climate change in relation to their health, safety, and wellbeing at work. As such we wanted to focus on using the responses from the focus group discussions to highlight the findings from the pile sort activity. In this sense we were hoping to describe the current ways in which farmers were thinking about and approaching the issue and identify areas of intervention opportunity.

The abstract needs to cover more the content of the paper.

Response: Thank you, we have updated the abstract.

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The suggestions are incorporated in the revised version, now the manuscript may be accepted in the present form.

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Thank you for considering my feedback.