Proceedings of the First International Conference on Stepped Wedge Trial Design

(Opening paragraph) The First International Conference on the Stepped Wedge Trial Design was hosted by the York Trials Unit, Department of Health Sciences, University of York on 10 March 2016. The conference brought together national and international delegates with experience, expertise or interest in this design which employs the incremental randomised implementation of an intervention. The design has gained popularity in the health, social and environmental sciences as a tool to enable the evaluation of interventions/policies whilst being rolled out gradually over time. The conference speakers included eminent researchers at the forefront of the development of the design: Professor Richard Lilford (University of Warwick), Professor Jim Hughes (University of Washington, USA), Dr Karla Hemming (University of Birmingham), Mr. Alan Girling (University of Birmingham), and Professor Andrew Forbes (Monash University, Australia). The keynote speaker, Professor Richard Lilford opened the conference by giving the context for classic stepped wedge designs. This was followed by nine oral and eight poster presentations where practitioners, researchers and methodologists shared ideas, best practice and challenges for the design, implementation and analysis of the stepped wedge model. The conference was simultaneously broadcast to remotely attending delegates from the UK and abroad via dedicated online channels. This supplement is a collection of the proceedings of the conference.