Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is a leading cause of death and disability – but it is largely preventable through healthy lifestyle choices and effectively detecting and managing risk factors across the ‘ABC’ of Atrial fibrillation (AF), Blood pressure (hypertension) and Cholesterol management, as well as optimising use of medicines.
Cardiovascular disease prevention is a national priority – with the NHS Long Term Plan aiming to prevent 150,000 strokes, heart attacks and dementia cases in ten years. To support this, Health Innovation Networks have led and supported a number of initiatives to spread and adopt innovation in CVD prevention.
We have worked with local clinicians across primary, secondary and community care on ‘find more, treat more, treat better’ approaches. Our work on improving anticoagulation therapy for AF is estimated to have prevented 50 strokes per year across our region. We continue to work with our local stakeholders on lipid management and have supported them to deliver significant improvements in high intensity statin prescribing.
CVD is strongly associated with health inequalities. There is significant variation in outcomes with those in the most deprived 10% of the population being almost twice as likely to die from CVD than those in the least deprived 10%. People with severe mental illness have an 85% higher risk of dying from CVD than the general population. We’re supporting targeted CVD prevention initiatives which directly reduce health inequalities and are highly cost effective in preventing cardiovascular events.
Our Community Involvement and Workforce Innovation team has worked with patients to develop simple and effective resources that outline the importance of managing cholesterol.
We also work with innovators to support the translation of research and development related to CVD into clinical practice. We advise companies seeking to develop and evaluate new diagnostic, devices, digital and AI technologies in line with NHS priorities and population needs.
Read more about our CVD prevention programme
‘New name … same aim: Building on a decade of health innovation’