Trial reportJournal of public health (Oxford, England)2018
Cardiovascular risk at health checks performed opportunistically or following an invitation letter. Cohort study.
Trial report in Journal of public health (Oxford, England), 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 11 citations in OpenAlex.
- Pooled it
- Evaluating the Effectiveness of Primary Care Health Checks at Assessing Cardiovascular Risks among Ethnic Minorities in the UK: A Systematic Review.Reviews in cardiovascular medicine · 2025Pooled it
- Evaluating the effectiveness of the NHS Health Check programme in South England: a quasi-randomised controlled trial.BMJ open · 2019Trial
- Ethnic differences in the burden of cardiovascular disease risk factors among adult residents of London: the TOGETHER study.BMC medicine · 2026Article
- NHS Health Check programme: a rapid review update.BMJ open · 2022Review
- Health checks and cardiovascular risk factor values over six years' follow-up: Matched cohort study using electronic health records in England.PLoS medicine · 2019Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
9 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Background: A population-based programme of health checks has been established in England. Participants receive postal invitations through a population-based call-recall system but health check providers may also offer health checks opportunistically. We compared cardiovascular risk scores for 'invited' and 'opportunistic' health checks. Methods: Cohort study of all health checks completed at 18 general practices from July 2013 to June 2015. For each general practice, cardiovascular (CVD) risk scores were compared by source of check and pooled using meta-analysis. Effect estimates were compared by gender, age-group, ethnicity and fifths of deprivation. Results: There were 6184 health checks recorded (2280 invited and 3904 opportunistic) with CVD risk scores recorded for 5359 (87%) participants. There were 17.0% of invited checks and 22.2% of opportunistic health checks with CVD risk score ≥10%; a relative increment of 28% (95% confidence interval: 14-44%, P < 0.001). In the most deprived quintile, 15.3% of invited checks and 22.4% of opportunistic checks were associated with elevated CVD risk (adjusted odds ratio: 1.94, 1.37-2.74, P < 0.001). Conclusions: Respondents at health checks performed opportunistically are at higher risk of cardiovascular disease than those participating in response to a standard invitation letter, potentially reducing the effect of uptake inequalities.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.