Methods	Cluster RCT, the community was the unit of randomisation.
Participants	Physicians (73% - primary care specialists, 22% surgeons, 5% medical sub-specialists) and nurses (75% hospital setting) from 6 communities Intervention: n=3 and Control:n=3 Country: US Type of targeted behaviour: general management of a problem (cancer care)
Interventions	Intervention Local Opinion Leaders + community outreach meetings + local TV program (2/3 communities) Method of OL identification: Sociometric Proportion of Social Network that nominated OL: NOT CLEAR Single OL or OL teams: teams of clinicians, unclear number OL disseminated information: Informal & Formal (Conferences, Educational material) OL frequency of involvement: UNCLEAR Control Standard dissemination
Outcomes	Health professional outcomes: physicians & nurses knowledge and attitudes scores about cancer pain management (CPM). Patient outcome: pain intensity score, pain prevalence.
Notes
Risk of bias
Bias	Authors’ judgement	Support for judgement
Random sequence generation (selection bias)	Unclear risk	p.193/Col 1/Para 2 “Three pairs of communities were matched according to the selection criteria. Within each pair, one was randomly assigned to the intervention condition and the other to the control condition.”
Allocation concealment (selection bias)	Low risk	It was a cluster RCT, with the community as the unit of randomisation
Blinding (performance bias and detection bias) All outcomes	Unclear risk	Not mentioned in the paper.
Incomplete outcome data (attrition bias) All outcomes	Unclear risk	Not mentioned in the paper.
Selective reporting (reporting bias)	Low risk	All outcomes mentioned in the methods section were also presented in the result section
Other bias	Low risk
Similar baseline outcome measures?	Low risk
Similar baseline characteristics?	Low risk	Pg.197/ Col1/Par 1 The six communities recruited into the study were similar in several key characteristics as follows: population (mean 32,000) , number of practicing physicians (mean, 56), and miles distant from Minneapolis -St. Paul (mean, 129).There were no significant differences in variables of interest between the six communities at baseline
Protection against contamination?	Low risk	Randomisation was done at the community level.