Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent steps his Department has taken to improve cardiovascular disease outcomes.

The Government is committed to tackling the biggest killers, including cardiovascular disease (CVD), and the Health Mission sets an ambition to reduce premature mortality from heart disease and stroke by 25% in the next 10 years. The Department held a symposium on heart disease and stroke on 13 March 2025 where charities, patient advocacy groups, clinicians, think-tanks and other experts discussed how to deliver on the ambition.

We are tackling the root cause of preventable heart disease and stroke by introducing the Tobacco and Vapes Bill, implementing the advertising regulations for less healthy food and drink on television and online, and empowering councils to block the development of new fast-food shops outside schools.

To improve access to the NHS Health Check, a core component of England’s CVD prevention programme, we are developing a new NHS Heath Check Online tool so that people can have a check at a time and place convenient to them to understand and act on their CVD risk.

Furthermore, we are trialling a new workplace CVD check which will deliver more than 130,000 lifesaving heart health checks in the workplace.