Health Services: Screening
(asked on 23rd October 2026) - View Source
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Baroness Merron on 1 October (HL3638), how the commissioned review will update modelling assumptions when the relevant economic data is not recorded.
As part of ongoing reviews to ensure the NHS Health Checks remain effective and evidence based, Department officials are carefully considering opportunities to enhance data monitoring.
For information on the scope and timelines of the National Institute for Health and Care Research's evidence review of the programme, I refer the Noble Lord to the answer provided on 1 October to Question HL3637, which for ease of reference, is reproduced below.
The NHS Health Check programme was introduced in England in April 2009. It has been subject to a number of subsequent evaluations and reviews, the latest of which was published in 2021.
The programme currently engages over 1.3 million people each year and, through behavioural and clinical interventions, prevents approximately 500 heart attacks and strokes a year. The NHS Health Check also identifies over 333,000 cases of obesity, 340,000 cases of high blood pressure, and 900,000 cases of raised cholesterol each year.
We are refreshing the NHS Health Check’s Best Practice Guidance with practical examples and tips to help commissioners and providers to improve delivery and support uptake of the programme. We are also developing the NHS Health Check Online which will allow people to undertake their NHS Health Check at home, at a time and place convenient to them.
As announced in the recently published Cardiovascular Disease Modern Service Framework, we have commissioned the National Institute for Health and Care Research to conduct an evidence review on the scope of the programme, which includes an update to the modelling assumptions used to estimate its impact.
The evidence review is expected to be completed by the second half of 2027, and we will consider the findings as appropriate to inform future policy development.