Cardiovascular disease (CVD), has a large impact of the health and life expectancy of people in Scotland, and this is particularly so in the least well off communities. Much of this could be avoided through preventing people becoming unwell in the first place and also better identification and management of those who already have risks for developing cardiovascular disease.

A major programme has been launched by Scottish Government to reduce cardiovascular disease in Scotland.

The three key areas of delivery for this programme are:

• Information and awareness – to increase awareness of cardiovascular risk factors in target populations and to ensure that individuals have information which empowers them to reduce their risk.
• Transforming models of care – to reduce known inequalities in cardiovascular morbidity and mortality by transforming models of care.
• Data and Quality Improvement -  to provide GP practices and clusters with the data and information to drive improvement in the identification and management of cardiovascular risk factors. 

One of the risks factors being targeted in the programme is having high levels of unhealthy cholesterol. Small reductions in people’s levels of unhealthy cholesterol can reduce the risk of them developing cardiovascular disease, and this can be achieved by prescribing medicines known as lipid lowering therapies.

Monitoring and evaluation is essential to ensure that the programme is achieving its goals and helping people in Scotland to live longer, healthier lives.

This project aims to inform the monitoring and evaluation of the CVD programme by using routinely available datasets to describe and explore patterns of prescribing of lipid lowering therapies (LLT) across Scotland and start to examine the impact of variations on patient outcomes.

This will provide baseline data to enable study of trends in prescribing and associated outcomes to be monitored as the CVD programme develops and more people have their risks identified and appropriately managed.

It will identify current areas of variation and inequality which may require further investigation and policy development. The analyses will be presented to and considered by the CVD Programme Steering Group which is chaired by Scotland's Chief Medical Officer.  

The work will also add to the knowledge base in an area which clinical experts in Scotland feel data is lacking, contributing to future clinical practice development for best patient care and outcomes.

The results will be made publicly available in the form an ADR-S Policy Brief.