Ovid Technologies (Wolters Kluwer Health) Acta Medica Okayama 1044-3983 35 6 2024 Preventable Fraction in the Context of Disease Progression 801 804 EN Bronner P. Gonçalves Department of Comparative Biomedical Sciences, Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, University of Surrey Etsuji Suzuki Department of Epidemiology, Graduate School of Medicine, Dentistry and Pharmaceutical Sciences, Okayama University The relevance of the epidemiologic concept of preventable fraction to the study of the population-level impact of preventive exposures is unequivocal. Here, we discuss how the preventable fraction can be usefully understood for the class of outcomes that relate to disease progression (e.g., clinical severity given diagnosis), and, under the principal stratification framework, derive an expression for this quantity for this type of outcome. In particular, we show that, in the context of disease progression, the preventable fraction is a function of the effect on the postdiagnosis outcome in the principal stratum in the unexposed group who would have disease regardless of exposure status. This work will facilitate an understanding of the contribution of principal effects to the impact of preventive exposures at the population level. No potential conflict of interest relevant to this article was reported.