Adapting an effective lifestyle intervention towards individuals with low socioeconomic status of different ethnic origins: the design of the MetSLIM study

People with low socioeconomic status (SES) and some ethnic minorities are often underrepresented in lifestyle programmes. Therefore, a lifestyle programme was developed especially targeting these groups. Developing this lifestyle programme and designing an intervention study to test the effectiveness of this programme was an informative process in which several obstacles were encountered and choices had to be made. Study protocols, however, rarely describe these obstacles encountered in the protocol design process, and it is not always clear why researchers made certain choices. Therefore, the aim of this article is to describe both the final MetSLIM study protocol and the considerations and choices made in designing this study protocol.