CVD has been identified as a national priority, with the government’s ‘health mission’ featuring a commitment to reduce premature deaths from heart disease and strokes by 25% within a decade. However, CVD prevention is not taking place at the scale needed and wide inequalities in CVD mortality rates continue to persist. The King’s Fund explores the issues in a new report, 'Shifting to prevention: How integrated care systems can tackle cardiovascular disease.'
Proactive identification, monitoring and treatment of high-risk individuals in primary care can help to prevent thousands of heart attacks, strokes and deaths every year, but this needs to be implemented much more consistently across England. To achieve this, GP practices need practical support from integrated care boards (ICBs) and others.
An effective approach to CVD prevention will require a lowering of CVD risk throughout the population through action on smoking, obesity and other determinants of health. This will require closer working between ICSs and public health teams and will need to be backed up by bold action from national government, the report asserts.
The King's Fund says there is a huge opportunity to improve the nation’s health and boost economic activity by tackling CVD, but ICSs will only be able to deliver a meaningful change if national policy wholeheartedly gives prevention the focus it deserves. It states that the 10 Year Health Plan includes "a welcome focus on CVD prevention but more will be needed to bring about improvement at the scale required."
Finally, the report concludes that there is a need for "bold national action on the causes of CVD, to create a sense of urgency and to complement and energise the work of local systems."
To read the full report, visit: Shifting to prevention: How integrated care systems can tackle cardiovascular disease
