Table 1.

Final coding framework

Theme	Category	Sub-categories	Description
Impact	Highest level of focus	Individual/organisational	If the intervention was provided so that the impact remained within the organisation after individuals had moved on, then projects were classified as having organisational level impacts. If the impact would move with health professionals as they moved between jobs then the impact was classified as individual.
	Absolute scope of influence of LMIC partner	Local/regional/national/international	Absolute scope of influence provided an estimation of size of the impact of interventions.
Approach	Strategy for capacity building	Education and training/infrastructure development	Approach to capacity building predominantly education/training or infrastructure strengthening.
	Health care issue addressed	Specialist/generic	Area of health care was classified as specialist if skills were not transferable to another area of clinical practice (e.g., fistula repair), and generic where they were (e.g., teaching skills for educators).
Relationship between partners	Mode of delivery	Direct delivery/via another organisation	Work was either delivered directly by one or other of the partner organisations or indirectly via a third organisation, a non-governmental organisation or a charity.
	Relative scope of influence of partners	Equal/unequal	Partnerships were classified by comparing the absolute scope of influence of the two partners.