Objective The objective of this review is to understand the types of observational study designs and analyses that have been used to investigate the impact of public health interventions that aim to improve early diagnosis of cancer.

Introduction Campaigns to improve public awareness of cancer symptoms need to be evaluated at various stages in the cancer pathway.

Inclusion criteria Analytic observational studies based on databases of routinely collected health data

Methods Abstracts in Ovid Medline and Embase and the Overton policy database from 2010 to the present will be extracted. Full text of potentially relevant sources will be screened. Covidence software will be used to manage the screening and data extraction process. Extracted data will be tabulated and presented graphically. A narrative summary will accompany the tabulated results.

The authors have declared no competing interest.

This study was funded by the NIHR Policy Research Programme (reference PR-PRU-NIHR206132). The views expressed are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of the NIHR or the Department of Health and Social Care.

I confirm all relevant ethical guidelines have been followed, and any necessary IRB and/or ethics committee approvals have been obtained.

Yes

I confirm that all necessary patient/participant consent has been obtained and the appropriate institutional forms have been archived, and that any patient/participant/sample identifiers included were not known to anyone (e.g., hospital staff, patients or participants themselves) outside the research group so cannot be used to identify individuals.

Yes

I understand that all clinical trials and any other prospective interventional studies must be registered with an ICMJE-approved registry, such as ClinicalTrials.gov. I confirm that any such study reported in the manuscript has been registered and the trial registration ID is provided (note: if posting a prospective study registered retrospectively, please provide a statement in the trial ID field explaining why the study was not registered in advance).

Yes

I have followed all appropriate research reporting guidelines, such as any relevant EQUATOR Network research reporting checklist(s) and other pertinent material, if applicable.

Yes

This is a protocol for a scoping review so there are no data.