Operational update by Jamie Waterall, National lead for Cardiovascular Disease Prevention & Associate Deputy Chief Nurse
Last week we published the latest official statistics on the NHS Health Check programme. This showed that between April 2013 and September 2016, 10.1 million people have been offered an NHS Health Check and 4.9 million people have had a check. This equates to 48.3% of people taking up the offer nationally. This makes this one of the largest adult prevention programmes of its kind internationally. This is something we should be collectively proud of, yet we can also reflect on how to do even better. We know that there is significant local variation in these figures, so I would strongly encourage colleagues to review their own data. Public Health England (PHE) remains committed in our offer to support local teams to maximise the impact of the NHS Health Check programme for their local residents. Please do use the various resources contained on our programme website and make contact with your local PHE centre for further support.
This month, PHE published Local health and care planning: menu of preventative interventions. The menu supports local planning processes and can be used to inform local commissioning strategies. Given the focus on preventative interventions, the NHS Health Check is referenced throughout this document as a means of systematically targeting the principle risk factors and conditions accounting for the largest proportion of disability adjusted life years lost. I would encourage colleagues to have a read to see how this can help them meet local targets.
In October, we published a revised version of the NHS Health Check information governance and data flows guidance. The guidance received input from a number of important stakeholders and we would like to thank all those involved in developing this update. The new guidance replaces the earlier document published in 2014. The major change to the new guidance recognises the role played by local authorities as commissioners of NHS Health Checks, which is instrumental in making the programme a success. It also includes an added feature of case studies to illustrate the different relationships between data controllers and data processors for NHS Health Checks.
Finally, I wanted to thank all those who submitted an abstract for the upcoming NHS Health Check conference which will take place on the 9th February in Manchester next year. In previous years, we have always been oversubscribed for this event, so I would encourage colleagues to register now to avoid disappointment.