Cardiovascular Disease Prevention Conference 2020: proactive, predictive, personalised

It was wonderful to see so many attendees at our seventh annual Cardiovascular Disease (CVD) Prevention Conference at The Kia Oval in London. There were over 460 delegates, 50 speakers, 12 workshops, 28 exhibitor stands and 40 poster presentations. The event provided a rich source of evidence, experience and ideas to support national and local action on the prevention of CVD.

The conference, chaired by Dr Sarah Jarvis MBE, opened with the inspiring ‘How to stop one condition leading to another’ video from the British Heart Foundation.

In the morning plenary session, we shared the word cloud output from the pre-conference question posed to delegates. Education, collaboration, NHS Health Checks and digital all featured prominently.

There were a wide variety of activities taking place throughout the day and key highlights from this year’s event include:

• A busy and vibrant exhibition marketplace featuring our gold sponsor BHR Pharmaceuticals, a number of corporate and third sector organisations, as well as free blood pressure testing – special thanks go to colleagues from Bromley, Bexley and Southwark for the blood pressure testing
• In the morning we heard presentations from Professor Steve Powis, NHS England & Improvement Medical Director, and Clare Perkins, Deputy Director for Priorities and Programmes at Public Health England (PHE).
• With over 40 poster presentations it was a hard task for delegates to choose the PHE poster award. Many congratulations to Ann Burrows (PHE) and her team for winning the vote. The winner of the NHS England & Improvement poster award was Karen Pearson (PHE). You can view copies of posters on display at the event here.  
• An exciting afternoon plenary session with Pecha Kucha style presentations. Congratulations to Professor Alf Collins (NHS England) and Professor Lucy Yardley (University of Southampton and University of Bristol) for winning the most compelling presentation on personalised care.
• International input from America with shared learnings from Dr Tom Frieden at Resolve to Save Lives
• A discussion led by Professor Chris Bentley on the Population Outcomes Through Services (POTS) framework, specifically focusing on hypertension
• A workshop focusing on physical activity for the prevention and management of CVD, delivered by partners. This follows the recent Physical Activity Health Matters publication.
• The publication of Heart UK’s Cardiovascular Disease Care - Best Practice report
• The event was trending on social media with over 950 tweets featuring our event hashtag #preventCVD2020.

PHE also published a blog on the 10 year CVD Ambitions for England – one year on.This blog outlines several promising areas of work and initiatives led by members of the CVD System Leadership Forum that have been addressing the ambitions since their launch in February 2019.

For those of you who weren’t able to attend the conference, presentations and videos from the event can be viewed on the CVD Conference website.

Thank you to everybody who made the day such a success.

Our gold sponsor was BHR Pharmaceuticals.

You can find out more information about our other corporate exhibitors here.