Population attributable fractions of modifiable cancer risk factors in Korea: a systematic review protocol

INTRODUCTION: The burden of cancer continues to increase worldwide, and cancer is the leading cause of life expectancy reduction and death in Korea. Population attributable fraction (PAF), an epidemiological measure of exposures and health outcomes, could provide information on the public health impacts of exposures in populations. Knowing the PAFs of modifiable risk factors could aid in planning and prioritising strategies to reduce cancer burden in the population. This study aims to summarise systematically the PAF estimates of modifiable cancer risk factors in Korea. METHODS AND ANALYSIS: This review will include studies that determined PAFs of modifiable risk factors on cancer incidence and mortality in Korea. We will define modifiable risk factors as those that can be changed directly by peoples’ conscious actions. We will perform systematic searches in EMBASE, MEDLINE, Cochrane Library and Korean databases (Korean Studies Information Service System, Research Information Sharing Service, KoreaMED, Korean Medical Database, National Assembly Library, and Korea Institute of Science and Technology Information) from their inception to July 2021. Two reviewers will independently screen studies for eligibility, extract data and perform quality assessments of the included studies. We will present the results in a qualitative or descriptive manner and will not perform meta-analyses or other quantitative data synthesis to derive summary estimates of PAFs because we anticipate high variability among PAF estimates. ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION: Ethics approval is not required because we will only use data from published papers. We will disseminate the results through publication in a peer-reviewed journals. PROSPERO REGISTRATION NUMBER: CRD42021268258.