We would like to thank the external members of the trial steering committee for their advice and support for the project: Linda Bauld, Marcus Munafo and Charlie Foster.
We are grateful to the participants and GPs who supported the study, giving so generously their time and sharing their experience with us; likewise, the practice managers and administrative staff at all of the collaborating practices and primary care trusts who provided valuable assistance to us throughout the study.
We would like to thank a number of people who helped towards the successful completion of the study, especially Mel Fairbairn, Maggie Kelly and Julie Lloyd who worked as the EARS HTs and researchers for the study; Marcela Haasova who helped with the baseline data analysis and Pippa Griew who supported in the preparation of the accelerometer data. We would also like to thank Naomi Southern who provided administrative support to the trial. We are grateful to the test subjects who provided invaluable feedback as smokers who did not wish to quit in the immediate future during the intervention development. We are also grateful for input from many community professionals and non-professionals. We thank the Plymouth Stop Smoking Service team, including Russell Moody and Mandy Luffman who advised on the intervention development, helped to recruit smokers, and received referred smokers who wished to quit. We thank the Plymouth NHS public health team, and community leaders and volunteers who advised on recruitment initiatives and intervention development. We thank John Thompson who supported practice managers and us with the searches of GP practice databases.
Ethical approval
Ethical approval for the study was granted by the NHS National Research Ethics Service Committee South West, UK.
Local Research Ethics Committee approval and the appropriate site-specific assessments were obtained from the Plymouth NHS Hospital Primary Care Trusts and all study staff held honorary contracts for working within the NHS trust.
The Trial was registered with the International Standard Randomised Controlled Trial Register – ISRCTN (16900744) and the National Research Register (2159).
Funding
This study was funded by the NIHR Health Technology Assessment Programme – project number 07/78/02.
The University of Exeter agreed to act as sponsor for the research and the study was adopted by the Primary Care Research Network (PCRN).
Contributions of authors
AH Taylor (as principal investigator) had overall responsibility for the study and TP Thompson was responsible for the day-to-day operationalisation and management of the study.
Initial drafting of the text was done by AH Taylor and TP Thompson, for all chapters except for Chapter 5 (Process and qualitative evaluation) which was written by TP Thompson, CJ Greaves and AH Taylor, and for Chapter 6 (Economic analysis), which was written by C Green and R Kandiyali.
AH Taylor and TP Thompson worked with FC Warren on data analysis and reporting for Chapter 3.
AH Taylor, TP Thompson, CJ Greaves and P Aveyard were responsible for developing the physical activity intervention and for its description in the report, as well as developing and applying the intervention fidelity checklist.
TP Thompson and CJ Greaves carried out the qualitative fieldwork, and performed the analysis, with the assistance of AH Taylor.
RS Taylor and FC Warren developed the statistical analysis plan with AH Taylor and TP Thompson.
R Kandiyali and C Green developed the economic analysis plan with TP Thompson and AH Taylor.
All co-applicants (AH Taylor, CJ Greaves, RS Taylor, C Green, P Aveyard, R Ayres, R Byng, JL Campbell, M Ussher, S Michie and R West) were involved in all stages of the work: the design, analysis, and commenting upon and drafting sections of the final report.
The views and opinions expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the Department of Health.
Disclaimers
This report presents independent research funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR). The views and opinions expressed by authors in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the NHS, the NIHR, NETSCC, the HTA programme or the Department of Health.
