Ethical issues in the design and conduct of stepped-wedge cluster randomized trials in low-resource settings

Background Stepped-wedge cluster randomized trials (SW-CRTs) are increasingly popular in health-related research in both high- and low-resource settings. There may be specific ethical issues that researchers face when designing and conducting SW-CRTs in low-resource settings. Knowledge of these issues can help to improve the ethical conduct of SW-CRTs in a global health context. Methods We performed an ethical analysis of two studies using...