**Background:** Chronic diseases (e.g., cardiovascular disease, cancers, diabetes, chronic respiratory conditions) account for nearly 75% of all deaths worldwide and disproportionately affect historically marginalized populations. Despite growing attention to health equity in public health and implementation research, there is no clear synthesis of which health equity frameworks and models (FM) have guided equity-focused chronic disease research or how they are applied. This scoping review protocol addresses that gap. The authors define health equity as 'everyone has a fair and just opportunity to be as healthy as possible,' following Jones and colleagues' conceptualization of equity as a continuous process requiring action on historical and contemporary injustices.
**Methods:** The review follows established scoping review guidance (Arksey and O'Malley, Levac et al., Peters et al.) and will report per PRISMA-ScR and PRISMA-E guidelines. The protocol is registered with the Open Science Framework (DOI: 10.17605/OSF.IO/SFVE6). A medical research librarian conducted systematic searches in PubMed, CINAHL+, APA PsycInfo, and Embase for peer-reviewed English-language articles published 2010–2021. Inclusion criteria require studies to address CDC-defined chronic diseases or prevention topics (physical activity, diet/nutrition, alcohol use, tobacco use) and demonstrate intentionality around health equity (e.g., equity-related aims, community involvement, targeting structural determinants). The health equity FM criterion is applied only at full-text screening. Exclusion criteria include non-empirical articles, conference abstracts, grey literature, non-human studies, and disparities studies that only describe disparities without assessing structural causes. Initial searches yielded over 65,000 records. Title/abstract screening will use a single-reviewer approach with rigorous protocols: pilot screening to establish free-marginal multi-rater kappa ≥ 0.8, biweekly IRR checks with stopping criteria, Covidence machine learning for relevance sorting, and team discussion of uncertain records. Full-text screening will use blinded dual independent review. Data extraction will use dual non-independent consensus coding and the Mixed Methods Appraisal Tool (MMAT) for quality assessment. Extracted data include bibliometric information, study context, design, FM characteristics (name, socioecological levels, equity constructs, construct relationships), and FM uses (study components informed, degree of integration).
**Key Results:** This is a protocol paper; no results are reported. The authors describe four study aims: (1) identify health equity FM applied in chronic disease studies; (2) characterize these FM using inductive and deductive approaches; (3) describe how FM are used; and (4) explore opportunities for integrating health equity FM into implementation science.
**Clinical Implications:** The findings will inform health-equity-focused chronic disease prevention and control research by providing a collated list of FM, descriptions of their characteristics, and case examples of application. Identified FM will be added to the existing Dissemination and Implementation Models in Health Research and Practice webtool. The authors acknowledge limitations including exclusion of non-English and pre-2010 literature, bias toward high-income country studies, and potential sensitivity loss from single-reviewer screening. They plan to mitigate these through hand-searching FM citations, detailed protocols, and multiple quality assurance measures.