The NHS Health Check is a cardiovascular disease prevention programme delivered across England. It aims to improve the health and wellbeing of adults aged 40-74 years through earlier awareness, assessment and management of the major risks factors and conditions driving premature death, disability and health inequalities in England. In doing so it will help to prevent heart disease, stroke, diabetes and kidney disease. The programme will also raise awareness of dementia both across the population and within high risk and vulnerable groups. Since 2013 this nationally led programme has been delivered by local authorities who are responsible for offering an NHS Health Check every five years to all eligible adults.

NHS Digital, acting on behalf of Public Health England, have collected NHS Health Check data that has been recorded by use of a clinical code in a patient’s electronic record within their registered GP practice. Data was extracted using the General Practice Extraction Service (GPES) run by NHS Digital in order to report access to and uptake of the programme. Insights from the work will help inform the future of the programme.

The publication was first launched in October 2019 and focussed on the demographics of patients attending and not attending an NHS Health Check between April 2012 and March 2018. In November 2020, further information was provided for the same groups of patients, including socio-economic characteristics and risk factors recorded in patients attending an NHS Health Check.

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Since 2013 data on the NHS Health Check programme has been reported by local authorities and published by Public Health England as indicators in the Public Health Outcomes Framework. The resource released below puts in context the methodologies and processes involved in the local authority reported data in relation to the data reported through the GPES extraction.