CVD training and resources

Resources for healthcare professionals

• Heart Failure Training Resource
  • This document aims to bring together resources that Health Innovation East is aware of and provide information on the content, the time commitment and any cost associated with using it, with the hope to support health care professionals in accessing and completing training.
• Pumping Marvellous
  • The Pumping Marvellous Foundation (PMF) is the UK’s patient-led Heart Failure charity. Founded by a heart failure patient whose experiences whilst rehabilitating, shaped the Foundation’s goals and principles of a patient-centric charity focused on improved patient outcomes.

Training videos

Implementing heart failure guidelines – November 2025

• Diagnosis and early detection
• Disease register validation
• Medicines optimisation

• • The clinical pharmacist’s role in HF medicines optimisation: Mr Jaya Authunuri.
  • Coding and disease validation in primary care: Dr Andrew Potter.
    Exploring the solutions to HF diagnosis and optimal management.

Managing heart failure across the spectrum – practical tips for primary care – October 2025

There are around 200,000 new heart failure diagnoses every year in the UK. Early identification of heart failure is crucial to improving patient outcomes, it is a treatable and manageable condition with appropriate care, but currently up to 80% of heart failure diagnoses in England are made in hospital, despite 40% of patients having symptoms that should have triggered an earlier assessment (1).

Join Prof. Ahmet Fuat, GPwSI in Cardiology, who will explore the different categories of heart failure, their implications for diagnosis and treatment, and share practical tips to support primary care healthcare professionals in the effective management of heart failure.

Learning objectives:

By the end of this session, participants will be able to:

• Differentiate between the main categories of heart failure – understanding these classifications is essential, as they provide insight into disease characteristics, guide accurate diagnosis, and influence the choice of therapy:
• HFpEF – heart failure with preserved ejection fraction
• HFrEF – heart failure with reduced ejection fraction
• HFmrEF – heart failure with mildly reduced ejection fraction.
• Recognise treatment options for heart failure and understand how and when to prescribe them appropriately.
• Manage patients who have received a heart failure diagnosis more effectively, improving their care and quality of life.

Recognising the signs and symptoms of heart failure – September 2025

There are around 200,000 new heart failure diagnoses every year in the UK. Early identification of heart failure is crucial to improving patient outcomes, it is a treatable and manageable condition with appropriate care, but currently up to 80% of heart failure diagnoses in England are made in hospital, despite 40% of patients having symptoms that should have triggered an earlier assessment.

This webinar aims to enable participants to:

• Gain insight into the specific needs and increasing prevalence of heart failure in the East of England
• Recognise the key signs and symptoms, focussing on practical approaches to support earlier identification and diagnosis of heart failure
• Enhance patient care and optimise treatment strategies to improve outcomes and quality of life for people living with heart failure
• Reduce the risks and complications linked to late diagnosis.

Download the webinar slides here

Making the best use of echocardiography in primary care – June 2025

Echocardiography is a key tool in the investigation and management of patients with a wide range of cardiovascular disease. In recent years, increasing demands on echo services have led to increasing waiting times for this important investigation. This can lead to a delay to disease modifying treatment and referral for timely intervention. It is vital we use this important investigation appropriately.

This webinar aims to explain how to make the best use of echocardiography in primary care. We will discuss a symptom approach, based on the British Society of Echocardiography primary care triage posters, to describe the symptoms that patients present with in which echocardiography is most useful, and those in which referring for an echo adds little to their assessment and management.

After this webinar we hope the referrer will feel more confident in making timely and appropriate echo requests, ensuring our patients get the test they need, when they need it.

North East Essex Community Cardiology Service – February 2024

Dr Max Hickman provides an overview of the cardiology service, the role the service offers to the community and how it has been developed with a particular focus on supporting detection and managements of people with heart failure as well as wider cardiovascular disease.

East Anglian CV seminar series: HF, whats new? – April 2022

Dr Pegah Salashouri provides an overview of the latest guidelines in management of heart failure.

Resources

• ‘Get your blood pressure checked’ campaign
  • The NHS ‘Get Your Blood Pressure Checked’ campaign was launched in 2024. The campaign encourages all adults 40 and over to get a blood pressure check at their local pharmacy.
    As part of this campaign, there are free resources available including editable posters and digital screens allowing you to share and support the campaign.
• Heart UK – The Cholesterol Charity
  • Heart UK has partnered with the NHS Accelerated Access Collaborative (AAC) and the Health Innovation Network to provide a comprehensive and varied education programme for healthcare professionals.
• CVD data and improvement tool (CVDPREVENT) 
  • The Cardiovascular Disease Prevention Audit (CVDPREVENT) is a national primary care audit of routinely held GP data. The tool provides open access data, with clear actionable insights for those tasked with improving cardiovascular health in England.

Resources for healthcare professionals

• East of England Lipid Optimisation and Familial Hypercholesterolaemia (LOAFH) Group
  • Position Statement on Lipid Lowering Strategies
  • This position statement, developed by the LOAFH group with input from over 90 stakeholders across all six Integrated Care Boards (ICBs) in the East of England, sets out a region-wide approach to improving lipid management and enhancing the identification and treatment of Familial Hypercholesterolaemia (FH). It includes key recommendations and strategic actions to support healthcare professionals in delivering optimised cardiovascular care.

• Lipid management pathways: The Health Innovation Network
  • Lipid management in England drives better CVD outcomes. Two pathways, one for acute cardiovascular disease in secondary care and one for primary care clinicians, have been developed to provide clear guidance for clinicians on how optimal lipid management may be achieved and provide an additional resource to support patient management.
• AAC Pathway
  • A summary of national guidance for lipid management for primary and secondary prevention of cardiovascular disease.
• HEART UK Tackling Cholesterol Together event – Duxford, Cambridgeshire, 21 March 2024
  • HEART UK and Health Innovation East were joined by experts across primary and secondary care to spotlight the heightened focus on cholesterol in secondary prevention of CVD to help improve health outcomes across the region. Please access the majority of slides from the day using the following links:
    • Introduction slides
    • Workshop 1 – Primary care challenges in lipid management and opportunities
    • Workshop 2 – Exemplar delivery models proving to be significantly affected
    • Workshop 3 – Practical guides to support the implementation of the novel therapy Inclisiran within primary care
    • Workshop 4 – FH identification – where to begin and who to test
• Inclisiran: Medical Directors pack
  • June 2023 – to support medical directors, integrated care boards
    and healthcare professionals with the rapid decision making required to enable the prescribing of inclisiran, a NICE-approved novel therapy – with the wider objective of supporting cholesterol optimisation and reducing cardiovascular deaths.
• Lipid Managment Workforce Competency Framework
  • Following a recent National Lipid Programme Workforce Support Solution, Soar Beyond and the Health Innovation Network have produced a Lipid Management Competency Framework. The competencies have been developed based on the Summary of National Guidance for Lipid Management for Primary and Secondary Prevention of cardiovascular disease (CVD) within general practice.

Training videos

Introduction to the Health Innovation East lipid management programme – April 2022.

Dr Max Hickman provides an overview of the Health Innovation East lipid management programme to support with improving the detection, prevention and treatment of CVD.

Beyond statins webinar – October 2024 

Dr Max Hickman presents on emerging alternatives to statin therapy for cholesterol management and cardiovascular health, offering new options for improving patient outcomes.

Bitesize Lipids event with Ahmet Fuat: Health Innovation East lipids programme  – March 2023

Dr Ahmet Fuat provides a comprehensive overview to support healthcare professionals to maximise opportunities around lipid management

A guide to lipid management in primary care – October 2022

Dr Max Hickman explains the importance of CVD and lipid management, including new pathways, guidance and novel therapies for healthcare professionals to improve the detection, prevention and treatment of CVD.

East Anglian CV Seminar Series – Lipids and Cardiovascular Risk: Whom, What and How to Treat? – October 2020

This seminar with Dr Paul Flynn, Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, covered a review of recent guidelines, the criteria and pathway for genetic testing for suspected monogenic familial hypercholesterolaemia (FH), the eligibility criteria and pathway for starting PCSK9 inhibitors and the referral pathways for advice and review in the region’s lipid clinics.

Resources for healthcare professionals

• Implementation pack: regional ICS’s – provides information to support implementation of a population health management approach to blood pressure management across your ICS. For healthcare professionals at:

• • Cambridgeshire and Peterborough ICS
  • Hertfordshire and West Essex ICS
  • Norfolk and Waveney ICS
  • Suffolk and North East Essex ICS
  • Bedfordshire, Luton and Milton Keynes ICS​

Training videos

Bitesize: How I achieved the QoF indicators in 6 months – hypertension

Speaker: Dr Bharan Kumar, GP Lead, Bharani Medical Centre and Clinical Lead, Population Health, NHS Frimley ICS

Hypertension in primary care: transforming the prevention of cardiovascular disease – June 2023.

An opportunity to hear from a wide range of speakers including: Dr Matt Kearney, Dr Max Hickman, Dr John Ford and an excellent patient story from Godwin Daudu covering topics related to optimising hypertension management in primary care.

East Anglian CV Seminar Series – Still the biggest killer – September 2021.

Professor Ian Wilkinson provides an indepth overview of hypertension diagnosis and management.

Resources for healthcare professionals

• FH Information Zone
  • Resources for all healthcare professionals to support the early detection and management of patients with Familial Hypercholesterolaemia in the NHS East Genomics region.
• FH Genetic testing pathway
  • The East Genomic Laboratory Hub Familial Hypercholesterolaemia Genetic Testing Pathway provides guidance for healthcare professionals with patients with a high likelihood of FH.

Training videos

East Anglian CV Seminar Series: FH Identification – March 2023

This video is for any healthcare professionals across primary, secondary and tertiary care who look after patients with, or at high risk of developing, atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease to hear from an expert panel including: Dr Javier Gomez, Dr Kate Downes, Dr Paul Flynn and Shelina Rajan.

Mark’s story – October 2022

Hear Mark’s story and experience about being diagnosed and living with FH.

Training videos

East Anglian CV seminar series – Combination Antithrombotic Therapy: Ensuring Safety and Optimising Efficacy – December 2020

Dr Unni Krishnan a practical overview of the evidence and guidelines that support the use of combination antithrombotic therapy in patients who have a clinical indication for concurrent use of long term anticoagulant therapy as well as antiplatelet therapy for atherosclerotic vascular disease.

Training videos

East Anglian CV seminar series – Trustworthy communication of risk and uncertainty: the Covid experience – April 2021

Professor Sir David Speigelhalter assess the trustworthiness of the way risks and uncertain evidence have been talked about during Covid. In particular, he will look at how background actuarial risk can be used to get a perspective on the risks facing those infected by the virus, and how the potential benefits and harms of vaccines can be communicated.