Mapping cancer literacy levels, barriers and facilitators, educational initiatives and misinformation narratives:...

Cancer literacy (CL) is essential for enabling informed decision-making, prevention, early detection and adherence to treatment. However, disparities in CL across Europe, coupled with the spread of disinformation, limit equitable access to cancer care. This protocol describes a collection of scoping reviews to document the state of CL, misinformation narratives and education and training initiatives and identify barriers and facilitators. This work is embedded within the activities of the Beating Cancer Inequalities through Literacy in Europe project and encompasses nine consortium countries across Europe: Romania, Portugal, Belgium, Bulgaria, Montenegro, Ukraine, Italy, Ireland and Moldova.

The protocol follows the Joanna Briggs Institute methodology and the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews(PRISMA-ScR) checklist, guided by the Population, Concept, Context framework. Searches will be conducted in PubMed, supplemented by grey literature, capturing results from January 2015 to December 2025. Eligible records will undergo full-text review. Data will be extracted into predefined categories reflecting the topics of interest, developed by the research team before extraction to include key study information. Then, sources in local languages are provided by the partners, included and validated by native-speaking team members, adding to the results found by the researchers.

No ethical approval is required. Findings will be disseminated via peer-reviewed publications, project reports and stakeholder workshops.

Open Science Framework (10.17605/OSF.IO/9AQSX).