Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment his Department has made of the efficacy of Public Health England’s How healthy is your heart? Test.

The Heart Age Test offers advice on lifestyle changes that help reduce people’s risk of heart attack and stroke and which can improve overall health and wellbeing, and has strong clinical and academic support.

As of September 2018, the Heart Age Test had been completed over 1.9 million times. In 2016, a British Medical Journal open paper was published, which analysed the first 500,000 test completions. The paper noted that estimated heart age was higher than chronological age for 79% of users, and that demographic and risk factor profiles resembled the population of England.

Public Health England is currently leading an evaluation of the September 2018 Heart Age Test campaign. The evaluation will assess reach and recognition of the campaign as well as extent to which the campaign acted as a prompt to use the Heart Age Test.