The Company Chemists’ Association (CCA) has urged policymakers to expand community pharmacy’s role in preventing cardiovascular disease (CVD) following the publication of a new government framework.
CCA chief executive Malcolm Harrison said today that the pharmacy blood pressure check service should be expanded as “a first step”, and that independent prescribing should be “harnessed by allowing pharmacists to initiate the supply of medicines to treat hypertension”.
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He said community pharmacy’s “accessibility, location and presence” makes it “ideally placed to play a greater role in CVD prevention, diagnosis and management”.
“A greater role for the sector can ensure targeted action in more deprived areas, where more pharmacies operate and the CVD burden is highest,” he added.
Funding
Harrison’s comments came following the publication of the Department of Health and Social Care and NHS England’s new modern service framework (MSF) for CVD earlier this week.
The framework lays out the government’s “10-year strategic vision and delivery model to reduce premature deaths from heart disease and stroke in England”.
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It said that to drive delivery, the “priorities and their metrics are immediately aligned” with financial year incentive schemes and frameworks for 2026 and 2027, which includes the Community Pharmacy Contractual Framework (CPCF).
And it added that delivery of the MSF “may differ from one area to another”, with some case-finding initiatives sitting with community pharmacies, and others with GP practices or specialist community services.
Harrison stressed in his response that “any expanded role for community pharmacy must be matched with appropriate funding” and “commissioned as part of a strategic plan to stabilise the community pharmacy network”.
Smoking and diabetes
The CVD MSF includes 12 priorities for “earlier prevention, diagnosis and treatment of cardiovascular, kidney and metabolic risk factors”.
These include “finding the missing millions with undiagnosed or unmanaged cardiovascular-kidney-metabolic risk factors” including smoking, as well as “optimising treatment, including supporting adherence” for those with high blood pressure, cholesterol, chronic kidney disease, diabetes and heart failure.
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Harrison noted that the MSF’s focus on these areas “aligns closely” with the CCA’s previous calls for expanding the role of the pharmacy sector.
He said the CCA’s modelling found that a nationally commissioned community pharmacy smoking cessation service could help “225,000 people” quit each year, while an NHS-commissioned type 2 diabetes screening service in community pharmacies could “identify 180,000 people with prediabetes and 45,000 undiagnosed diabetics”.
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It comes as funding previously ring-fenced for Pharmacy First has now been combined with the “core CPCF sum”, including the Pharmacy Contraception Service and the Hypertension Case-Finding Service.
And it follows the government revealing in January that a drive to “raise awareness of high blood pressure” saw “50,046 more people” getting blood pressure checks at pharmacies.
