Evaluating health-related quality of life in Ethiopia: protocol for systematic review and meta-analysis of EQ-5D-based studies

Introduction Understanding the broad aspect of health-related quality of life (HRQoL) is essential to knowing how health problems affect individuals’ overall well-being. Evaluating HRQoL is very important in Ethiopia’s diverse healthcare setting. This protocol describes a meta-analysis and systematic review that uses the EQ-5D instrument to examine HRQoL in Ethiopia.Methods The study will follow Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis Protocols guidelines, conducting a systematic literature search across PubMed, Web of Science, Embase, Cochrane library and Scopus using keywords like ‘quality of life’, ‘QoL’, ‘health-related quality of life’, ‘HRQoL’, ‘EQ-5D’, ‘EQ-5D-3L’, ‘EQ-5D-5L’, ‘EuroQol’, ‘five dimensions’ and/or ‘Ethiopia’. The STATA will be used to pool the mean EQ-5D utility and EQ-VAS scores for a specific disease using the random-effect (Der Simonian–Laird estimator method) and fixed-effect (inverse variance method) models. The quality assessment tool for observational cohort and cross-sectional studies developed by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute will be used for quality assessment.Ethics and dissemination Publicly accessible previously published articles will be included in the research. Therefore, doing this study does not require ethical approval. The protocol offers transparency and adherence to research standards because it is registered on PROSPERO (ID: CRD42024505028). Peer-reviewed publications and conference presentations are dissemination plans.PROSPERO registration number CRD42024505028.