PocDoc powers the Darlington Healthy Hearts Roadshow, delivering 150 cardiovascular screenings in five days across the borough's most underserved communities

Over five days, the roadshow delivered 150 Healthy Heart Checks - the equivalent of nearly a fifth of a typical GP practice's entire annual NHS Health Check quota¹ - without requiring a single GP appointment

The programme was designed to reach the people traditional healthcare pathways miss: residents in areas of higher deprivation, Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities and anyone who finds it difficult to access standard GP services. By rotating across community centres, a caravan site and a town centre location, the roadshow met people where they are - not where the system expects them to be.

Why Darlington?

Darlington sits in the North East of England, a region that faces some of the country's starkest health inequalities. The North East has the lowest healthy life expectancy and the highest health inequalities of any region in England². CVD accounts for 24% of all deaths in the region³, and each year over 6,700 people die from cardiovascular disease across the North East and North Cumbria - the equivalent of one in four of all deaths⁴. An estimated 430,000 people are living with cardiovascular disease in the region, with many more likely undiagnosed⁴.

Within Darlington itself, residents in the most deprived wards have significantly lower life expectancy and higher mortality from heart disease compared to those in more affluent areas⁵. Emergency hospital admission rates rise in direction correlation with deprivation⁵, and CVD risk factors - including smoking, obesity and physical inactivity - are more prevalent in the borough's disadvantaged communities.

The roadshow targeted these communities directly. Locations included Firthmoor Community Centre, which serves one of Darlington's most deprived areas, and the Rowan East caravan site on Levisham Lane - a session exclusively for site residents, a community that frequently faces barriers to engaging with mainstream health services. A town centre session at the Joseph Pease Monument ensured the roadshow was also accessible to the broader Darlington public.

The results

Over five days across five sessions at three locations, 150 residents recived a comprehensive Healthy Heart Check. Each check took approximately 20 minutes and included blood pressure, cholesterol (full lipid panel), height and weight and blood sugar (HbA1c). Patients recieved results on the day, with those identified as high-risk reffered directly to their GP for further tests or treatment.

To put the 150 figure in context: a typical GP practice's annual quota for NHS Health Checks is around 800. This is single five-day roadshow delivered nearly a fifth of that toal - without using any GP time, without requiring appointments and by going to the communities rather than asking them to come to surgery.

This is consistent with what PocDoc and HI NENC have found across the wider North East. In a Cambridgeshire and Peterborough pilot, over a third of patients said that they would not have attended their full NHS Health Check without completing the PocDoc test first⁶. In the Cumbria Health partnership, 78% of those tested had never done a cholesterol check in the last five years⁷, and uptake exceeeded 90% - the best-ever utilisation figure for an NHS-supported screening initiative⁷.

A deeper partnership in the North East

The Darlington Healthy Hearts Roadshow builds on a substantial and growing partnership between PocDoc and Health Innovation North East and North Cumbria. In December 2025, PocDoc announced that its Healthy Heart Check programme had secured new multi-year funding from the North East and North Cumbria Integrated Care Board (ICB) through the Healthier & Fairer Programme⁸.

That programme has already delivered significant impact. More than 60% of patients tested in the region's community-led screening locations were found to be at risk of cardiovascular disease and referred for treatment⁸. The initial work focused on screening patients from historically underserved groups - including people from Black-African, South Asian and other minority ethnic backgrounds in Middlesbrough - and revealed significant gaps in access to testing⁸.

PocDoc's work in the region has also included a collaboration with Middlesbrough Football Club Foundation, bringing match-day health checks to fans at the Riverside Stadium⁹, and a partnership with the NHS Targeted Lung Health Check programme in the North East, leveraging cornary artery calcium as a biomarker to identify patients at heightened cardiovascular risk¹⁰.

The 'Attacking the Prevention Gap' project - led by HI NENC, Health Innovation Yorkshire and Humber, and PocDoc - was shortlisted for the 'Generating Impact in Population Health through Digital' award at the 2024 HSJ Digital Awards¹¹.

The national context

NHS reserch shows that each digital health check can save 20 minuites of GP's time¹², and early detection could prevent up to 80% of CVD cases - equivalent to saving an estimated 136,000 lives in the UK each year¹³.