Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government what mechanisms are in place to monitor whether the NHS Health Check programme is delivering the long-term health, NHS, social care and economic benefits projected in their health economic modelling; and if no such monitoring is undertaken, why not.

The NHS Health Check programme was introduced in England in April 2009. It has been subject to a number of subsequent evaluations and reviews, the latest of which was published in 2021.

The programme currently engages over 1.3 million people each year and, through behavioural and clinical interventions, prevents approximately 500 heart attacks and strokes a year. The NHS Health Check also identifies over 333,000 cases of obesity, 340,000 cases of high blood pressure, and 900,000 cases of raised cholesterol each year.

We are refreshing the NHS Health Check’s Best Practice Guidance with practical examples and tips to help commissioners and providers to improve delivery and support uptake of the programme. We are also developing the NHS Health Check Online which will allow people to undertake their NHS Health Check at home, at a time and place convenient to them.

As announced in the recently published Cardiovascular Disease Modern Service Framework, we have commissioned the National Institute for Health and Care Research to conduct an evidence review on the scope of the programme, which includes an update to the modelling assumptions used to estimate its impact.

The evidence review is expected to be completed by the second half of 2027, and we will consider the findings as appropriate to inform future policy development.