FOREWORD
Our Action Plan Better Health, Better Care, which I launched in December 2007, confirmed that we wanted Coronary Heart Disease ( CHD) and stroke to continue as one of the national clinical priorities for NHSScotland. We also promised that the CHD and Stroke Strategy, which was first published in 2002 and updated in 2004, would be refreshed, to bring it fully into line with the general approaches set out in Better Health, Better Care, especially in relation to the management of long-term conditions.
In keeping with the ethos of mutuality which we want to promote within NHSScotland, we have produced a consultation document to allow as wide a range of people as possible to contribute to the revised strategy which we'll be publishing later in the year.
As you'll see when you read the consultation document which follows, we haven't tried to produce a treatise on cardiology or stroke medicine. We want instead to concentrate on the areas which we know haven't received the attention they might have had: issues such as inherited cardiac conditions (including those resulting in sudden cardiac death); cardiac rehabilitation; and longer-term support in the community for those who have been discharged from hospital after a stroke.
We also want the strategy to reflect our general work on health improvement and the reduction of health inequalities. Cardiovascular disease remains a priority, not least because much of it can be prevented through tackling the key risk factors involved - smoking, diet and physical activity - and because of its association with significant health inequalities.
The consultation also emphasises the importance we attach to making sure that research is translated into new treatments as swiftly as possible, so that people in Scotland with heart disease, or who have had a stroke, get access to care that stands comparison with the best elsewhere in the world.
I very much hope you will take the opportunity offered by this consultation to help us identify the key pieces of work that should feature in the action plan which will form the core of the revised strategy. We have to make sure that services in this clinical priority area meet people's needs, and that we learn from people's experience of existing services to make sure any gaps are plugged, as part of a process of continuous improvement.
I would like to see contributions from people who have any form of cardiac disease or who have had a stroke, their families and carers, the voluntary sector organisations which act as the advocates of people with any kind of cardiovascular disease, and those who have a personal or professional interest in any of the issues covered by the consultation document.
Nicola Sturgeon, MSP
Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Secretary for Health and Wellbeing