Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what action the Department is taking to [a] raise awareness, [b] improve support, and [c] tackle women's heart health.

The Government is committed to prioritising women’s health as we fix the National Health Service and tackling women’s heart health will be key aspect of our mission.

To accelerate progress on the Government’s ambition to reduce premature deaths from heart disease and stroke by 25% within a decade, we will publish a Cardiovascular Disease Modern Service Framework (CVD MSF) later this year. The Department and NHS England are engaging widely with stakeholders to co-produce the CVD MSF, ensuring that experts, people and communities are at the heart of its development.

The renewed Women’s Health Strategy will update on the delivery of the 2022 Strategy and set out how the Government is taking further steps to improve women’s health, including action regarding CVD, as we deliver the 10-Year Health Plan.

Alongside this, since January, the Government has run the Healthy Choices Quiz campaign which supports women to prioritise health improvements and take proactive action on a range of behaviours, many of which support heart health.

Furthermore, work to improve access to the NHS Health Check programme, a core component of England’s CVD prevention programme, is ongoing. The programme prevents around 500 heart attacks or strokes annually and every year, around 770,000 women complete an NHS Health Check. The Department is currently piloting the NHS Health Check Online service in local authorities across England, which will allow women to undertake their health check at home, at a time and place convenient to them.