Burden of cancer attributable to lifestyle risk factors in Brazil

Abstract

This proposal consists of a research internship at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health under the supervision of Professor Edward Giovannucci from July 2017 to June 2018. The work plan prioritizes the research project development, which includes knowledge exchange in preventable cases estimates, literature review, statistical analyses, and writing a manuscript. There is also an intention to attend other academic activities, such as courses and seminars, and develop further scientific investigations. The research internship project aim to deepen the analysis on the burden of cancer attributable to physical inactivity in Brazil, the main objective of the doctoral project, contextualized to the other lifestyle risk factors. Therefore, the objective of the current research project is to estimate the burden of cancer attributable to lifestyle risk factors in Brazil. We will gather lifestyle risk factors prevalence (physical inactivity, low fruit and vegetable intake, overweight, alcohol consumption, and tobacco smoking) from the most recent nationally representative health survey conducted in Brazil, Brazilian National Health Survey, 2013. The magnitude of association between lifestyle risk factors and types of cancer will be obtained from literature review. We will revise International Agency for Research on Cancer monographs and handbooks of prevention, World Cancer Research Fund reports, and search Medline, Embase e Web of Science databases to retrieve relative risks. Through this data we will estimate fractions of cancer attributable to lifestyle risk factors considering different counterfactual scenarios based on risk factor elimination (population attributable fractions - PAF) and reduction (potential impact fractions - PIF), individually and combined. Finally, to estimate number of cancer cases that could be avoided by removing/reducing lifestyle risk factors we will apply PAF/PIF estimates to number of cancer cases in Brazil, obtained from Globocan 2012. (AU)