Bringing heart health closer to home: Unlocking the power of cardiovascular prevention

Every month in East London, around 220 people die from heart and circulatory diseases, many from deprived communities. 

One of the silent killers? High cholesterol. It has no symptoms, but it drives significant numbers of strokes and heart attacks. 

Barts Health NHS Trust and UCLPartners, have worked with North East and North Central London ICB, North East London Local Pharmaceutical Committee, HEARTUK and NHS England to provide a rapid lipid test. This new service takes just seven minutes and provides a full lipid breakdown, as well as calculating a person’s risk of developing a heart attack or stroke over the next 10 years. 

The test was initially trialled in Newham and is offered in community pharmacies. By placing it where people already go, prevention becomes a normal part of care, helping people understand their health and get support earlier. The model has since expanded across North East London. 

We are sharing our top five takeaways on how to embed a health prevention service within community settings. 

1. Put accessible prevention where people already are 

If you want prevention to be readily available and easily accessible to people, you must put it in places that are already part of their lives. 

We took a simple, validated, seven-minute lipid test and put it in community pharmacies. Pharmacies are within walking distance for 90% of residents. They’re staffed by people who understand their communities, and people can simply drop in and be offered the test without the need to have pre-booked an appointment. 

Most importantly, in deprived areas, they’re often the most accessible healthcare touchpoint. 

2. Build the right partnerships from day one 

No single organisation can make this kind of health care shift work. We brought together NHS, healthcare leaders, community leaders, ICBs and the charity sector to roll out the rapid cholesterol test. 

It wasn’t just about pooling resources; it was about making sure a patient’s journey didn’t break between a test and the next step. So, when people access the test and receive their results, they are referred to their GP for treatment if necessary, and they have immediate access to health information.

3. Train the workforce beyond the specialist 

If only one professional can deliver your service, it will bottleneck when demand rises. Not just pharmacists, but the wider pharmacy team can deliver this service, to offer the test and start the conversation. 

The “Make Every Contact Count” approach meant we reached people who came in for completely different reasons. 

4. Outreach is not optional, it is routine 

Prevention services and new innovations will fail if people don’t know they exist. 

We went beyond the pharmacy, into community centres, libraries, and places of worship to build awareness of the  prevention service available to them and build trust in the communities we want to support. 

People are more likely to act when they hear about a service in a space they choose to be in and feel safe in. 

5. A test is only the start 

Successful prevention needs to go beyond the point of diagnosis and continue beyond the setting it was offered.  

As partners on the project, HEART UK provided culturally relevant advice such as SMART recipes, cholesterol-friendly swaps, and step-by-step guidance for healthcare professionals. This meant that tangible lifestyle swaps can be made, and people feel supported beyond their pharmacy visit. 

The bottom line 

Cardiovascular disease remains the UK’s biggest killer, but placing digital prevention in the community is a proven, scalable, and equitable way to change that. 

This work shows what’s possible when innovation meets inclusivity, and when partnerships are built on trust and co-production. 

If you want to embed prevention successfully: put it where people already are, build your collaborations early, train the whole team, do the outreach, and pair innovation with human follow-up. 

The lessons we learnt here go beyond heart health; they stand true for any preventative innovation. Any test or measure must be trusted and accessible to those you want to benefit from it and follow up care and advice must be built into the process to ensure success.  

To find out more about this work, contact:  
Jagjot Kaur Chahal, Cardiovascular Disease Prevention Lead Pharmacist at Barts Health NHS Trust at jagjot.chahal@nhs.net  
Rachana Bhatt, Senior Implementation Manager for CVD at UCLPartners at rachana.bhatt@uclpartners.com