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A better understanding of risk is needed to prevent cardio-vascular disease, says think tank |
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The NHS should take a more sophisticated approach to risk in trying to prevent cardio-vascular disease, a new report argues today. The report The Prevention of Cardio-Vascular Disease presents a series of recommendations all aimed at improving the way the health services delivers preventative services.
Cardio-vascular disease is one of the UK’s biggest killers, but takes many forms including heart disease, stroke, peripheral arterial disease and kidney disease. Patients may be at risk of more than one of these types of illnesses, and so ‘one size fits all’ models of prevention may not be appropriate.
Commenting, report author David Furness, SMF Health Project Leader, said:
“The NHS should be congratulated for recognising that preventing cardio-vascular disease is about reducing risk, not just screening for disease. However we need to do more to identify individuals at risk of developing different types of illnesses, and to put in place appropriate interventions to help prevent this. This might be through GP consultations or even early years programmes that help children from developing unhealthy lifestyles that are likely to result in heart disease later in life”.
One of the contributors to the report, Professor Roger Boyle, the National Clinical Director for Heart disease, said:
“It has been a long standing ambition of the Department of Health [to make sure that] health promotion and the mechanics of prevention are dealt with in a more holistic way – not just treating heart disease but looking at the entirety of an individual’s health”.
The Social Market Foundation hopes that this report will play a part in developing a programme of risk assessment and preventative measures that will help to tackle cardio-vascular disease in the coming years.
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