ArticleBMJ open2024
How to distinguish promotion, prevention and treatment trials in public mental health? Study protocol for the development of the VErona-LUgano Tool (VELUT).
Article in BMJ open, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
1 citing paper in PubMed.
- How to distinguish promotion, prevention, and treatment trials in public mental health: development and validation of the VErona-LUgano Tool (VELUT).Epidemiology and psychiatric sciences · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
15 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
introductionPromoting mental health, preventing and treating mental disorders are critically important in public health, and many randomised controlled trials (RCTs) evaluate intervention strategies for these objectives. However, distinguishing promotion from prevention and from treatment RCTs is challenging. A tool to place studies along the promotion-to-treatment continuum in mental health research does not exist, leaving it to researchers and policymakers to decide on how to classify individual RCTs, which hinders evidence synthesis. METHODS AND ANALYSIS: We present a protocol for the development of a new tool to assist researchers in distinguishing RCTs along the promotion-to-treatment continuum. We will establish a Tool Development Group, and use the Population, Intervention, Comparison and Outcome framework to define constructs. We will generate, define, categorise and reduce the items in the tool using qualitative methods, including cognitive interviews and a Delphi exercise. Psychometric evaluation-including unidimensionality, local independence, monotonicity and item homogeneity-will include data collection, scoring, internal consistency checks and factor analysis of the tool's indicators for available RCTs. We will use standard Cohen's kappa statistics to assess the reliability of the tool. ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION: This study involves data collection from the already published literature. However, this protocol has been approved by the ethics committee of the Università della Svizzera Italiana (CE 2024 04). The results of the present project will be disseminated in peer-reviewed journals and at international and national scientific meetings. Training materials for the application of the tool will also be developed and disseminated to the scientific community. The tool and all related implementation materials will be published on a website and will be freely accessible to the public.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.