Doodeez / Shutterstock.com
The community pharmacy sector is “ideally placed to play a greater role” in the government’s cardiovascular disease (CVD) modern service framework (MSF) for England, the Company Chemists’ Association (CCA) has said.
Launched on 7 July 2026, the framework is aimed to help reduce premature deaths from heart disease and strokes by 25% over the next decade.
Currently, there are around 33,000 premature deaths each year from CVD and stroke, the framework said.
According to the British Heart Foundation, CVD causes around 140,000 deaths in England each year.
The government and NHS England said the framework, which supports the ten-year health plan for England, “marks a clear shift from reactive care to prevention”.
A strategic vision and delivery model, also published on 7 July 2026, said the framework will take a “holistic cardiovascular-kidney-metabolic (CVKM) approach with a strong focus on reducing inequalities” and will take a “joined-up approach to identifying and tackling these risk factors”.
It will begin with a three-year plan focused on 12 priority areas, including starting and optimising treatment for people with high-risk conditions including high blood pressure, diabetes and chronic kidney disease, as well as “finding the missing millions with undiagnosed or unmanaged CVKM risk factors”.
Malcolm Harrison, chief executive of the CCA, said: “Community pharmacy’s accessibility, location and presence within local communities make it ideally placed to play a greater role in CVD prevention, diagnosis and management. Additionally, a greater role for the sector can ensure targeted action in more deprived areas, where more pharmacies operate and the CVD burden is highest.”
Findings published in May 2026, based on data from the South London Stroke Register, showed that stroke incidence was twice as high in black African and black Caribbean populations compared with white populations, with rates consistently higher in socio-economically deprived areas.
Harrison said that CCA modelling shows that a national pharmacy-led smoking cessation service could support more than 225,000 people to quit each year.
Meanwhile, an NHS-commissioned type 2 diabetes mellitus screening service in community pharmacies could screen 1.5 million adults annually, identify 180,000 people with prediabetes and 45,000 undiagnosed diabetics, saving the NHS £50m in recurring costs annually, he added.
Harrison also called for the community pharmacy blood pressure check service to be expanded, and said that “independent prescribing should be harnessed by allowing pharmacists to initiate the supply of medicines to treat hypertension”.
“Of course, any expanded role for community pharmacy must be matched with appropriate funding, and be commissioned as part of a strategic plan to stabilise the community pharmacy network.”
Mahendra Patel, chair of the Royal College of Pharmacy’s English Pharmacy Advisory Council, said: “Pharmacists play a vital role in preventing and managing CVD through blood pressure checks, identifying risk factors such as high cholesterol and diabetes, supporting the safe and effective use of medicines, and helping people make positive lifestyle changes.
“Community pharmacies provide convenient, accessible care in the heart of local communities and are well placed to help reduce health inequalities by reaching those at greatest risk, including people living in areas of higher deprivation and many black and South Asian communities.
“As the government develops its neighbourhood health approach, it is essential that pharmacy services and pharmacists are appropriately commissioned and resourced to effectively help deliver earlier intervention, improve outcomes and reduce premature deaths from heart disease and stroke.”
Posting about the CVD framework LinkedIn, the Alliance for Heart Failure said it was “delighted to see recognition of the need to develop case-finding services for heart failure”.
It added that its recent report, ‘Primary care: a call to action‘, “highlighted the potential to build a heart failure check into the existing hypertension case-finding service in pharmacies, helping to get treatment to the estimated 400,000 people living undiagnosed with the condition”.
