Table 2

Qualitative data collection, participants and frequency of contacts

Method	Participants	Frequency of contacts	Data collected
Observations	Clinic activities	240 observation days	Descriptions of clinic activities, operation of intervention activities, patient pathways and barriers and facilitators to chronic care and how they changed over time.
Observations	Patient consultations	443 patient consultations	Descriptions of nurses, lay health workers and patients’ interactions, and how they changed over time. We assessed time spent by patients during consultations to understand nurse workload and how the time spent affects adherence of patients to appointment.
In-depth interviews	Clinic managers	36 interviews with 9 managers (4 per participant)	Exploring clinic routines, their expectations of the research, any concerns, how patients with chronic diseases are managed, their experience with the lay health worker intervention and perceptions of whether change occurred.
	Clinic supervisors	6 interviews with 3 supervisors (2 per supervisor)
	Subdistrict manager	3 interviews
	Lay health workers	60 interviews with 10 workers (6 per worker)	Monthly account of implementation progress. Details of day-to-day experience in the clinic and how the clinics were changing.
	Implementation manager	9 interviews	Progress of the intervention across the clinics and how differently the intervention was running from one clinic to another.
Exit interviews	Patients	703 interviews	Patients’ experience of care in the clinic and their engagement with the LHWs, nurses and staff in general, and how this changed with the intervention.

LHW, lay health worker.