CPS Manifesto 2026: Detect

Published: 30/10/25

In line with our 2026 Manifesto, a key policy area is that of detecting illness in those who may present at the Community Pharmacy with or without symptoms. 

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This allows earlier interventions and lifestyle advice, potentially reducing critical health events that could have been prevented through screening, for example, heart attacks and strokes. 

Thanks to advances in medicines and strategies to tackle cardiovascular risks across the population, the death rates of heart and circulatory diseases have declined over the last several decades. 

However, despite this significant improvement, an estimated 700,000 people in Scotland are living with a cardiovascular disease today and this collection of conditions still cause 29% of all deaths.  

Thankfully, the main predictive factors for heart attack and stroke are well established and easily measured:   

• high blood pressure  

• high cholesterol  

• atrial fibrillation * 

Like many other diseases, the burden of cardiovascular disease is distributed disproportionately, with those in areas of multiple deprivation having higher blood pressure and cholesterol levels than their counterparts in more affluent areas.  

As these predictive factors can go completely unnoticed in terms of symptoms, many people in Scotland have no idea that their risk of developing or already having cardiovascular disease is high. Crucially, this means that they often have no reason to be routinely engaged with NHS services, so are never screened despite other risk factors such as age and weight suggesting that they should be.  

It has already been recognised in several countries that the reach of pharmacies into communities - particularly in more deprived areas - presents an opportunity to engage with and screen citizens who would otherwise not present to the health service until they experienced symptoms or a cardiovascular event.  

NHS England has since 2021 commissioned an opt-in hypertension case-finding service which sees pharmacy team proactively offering targeted blood pressure checks21 - consistently testing over 200,000 patients each month of late. 

Beyond case-finding and referrals, the community pharmacy network in Scotland’s prescribing capability opens up possibilities around initiation of therapy where appropriate.  

* Although the UK National Screening Committee does not currently recommend that a standalone national Atrial Fibrillation screening programme is established, many modern blood pressure devices are designed to pick up on heart rate and rhythm irregularities, which would further support the wider cardiovascular detection agenda if used in such a scheme.  

Given the successes of the service in England, and similar projects across Europe, CPS believes that the community pharmacy network should be commissioned to undertake cardiovascular screening which may involve measurement of these predictive factors in target populations.  

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