Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is their assessment of the Inter99 review of evidence relating to the effectiveness of mass screening and lifestyle coaching on ischaemic heart disease.
The Inter99 randomised controlled trial has been critically appraised by Public Health England’s Expert Scientific and Clinical Advisory Panel (ESCAP). ESCAP’s appraisal has highlighted that although the study did not detect positive health outcomes at a population-level, the trial did report positive lifestyle changes for individual participants.
ESCAP also recognised that there were important differences between the health check considered in the Inter99 trial and the NHS Health Check, which limits its generalisability to the programme in England. In particular, the NHS Health Check population is both older and less healthy than the Danish population studied in the trial. The interventions also differ as the NHS Health Check has a much stronger focus on clinical management of newly detected disease.