The action funded under this topic will consider primary and secondary prevention strategies, early detection, timely diagnosis and treatment (healthcare delivery), lifestyle changes (personal responsibility), and living environment (community responsibility).

To address this challenge, the action funded under this topic should:

• select up to five cities to serve as pilot use cases. These cities should be representative of the European context (in particular in relation to size and population) to allow broader implementation across regions/countries, different cultural and/or economic distributions, considering different health care structures (private/public) in different countries. Indicatively, each pilot city (or another urban administrative entity) is expected to have a population of at least 50 000 in its urban centre, in line with the OECD-EC definition of a city;
• conduct a gap analysis of existing cardiovascular disease screening and diagnostics, clinical pathways and public health policies to guide the development of scalable models and best practices to fill these gaps, also considering broader European application (for example, set targets, define actions, strengthen enablers). In this analysis, due attention should be given to high-stress lifestyles (nutrition, physical activity) and socio-economic disparities. The identified solutions for improvement should be based on data-driven insights to identify multi-sectorial interventions that improve the management of CVD risk factors (such as hypertension, diabetes, low-density lipoprotein cholesterol) and prevent these risks from developing. They should also consider the entire continuum of care (detect, treat, control). The work on performance indicators including harmonisation is key to set a baseline from which improvements can be made. Applicants are expected to consider all applicable legislative and regulatory constraints (national, regional, local) and their possible impact on the implementation and results of the project. End-users (including citizens, patients, healthcare professionals and providers, health technology developers among others) should be included from the start in the co-creation process to ensure future buy-in and implementation.
• collaborate with patients and citizens to develop strategies and guidance for effective CV health awareness campaigns;
• collaborate with healthcare professionals to review and adapt guidance on CVD prevention and management, identifying opportunities to maintain and optimise healthcare workforce resources and engagement;
• set up sustainable platforms and other support mechanisms for deployment of the models (sharing best practice between pilot cities and across regions);
• pilot novel and/or improved early detection and diagnostic solutions, patient management strategies, (including improved patient support, remote patient management, patient flows), and initiatives to maintain workforce engagement;
• explore potential funding tools to complement healthcare systems funding for managing cardiovascular health (including bonds, insurance, crowdsourcing, etc.) which could be used to implement the models;
• leverage existing and newly created sources of multimodal data (contemplating opportunities provided by EHDS) for decision making and management of CVD (collecting, connecting, standardising, processing and analysing);
• design and deploy communication and awareness-raising campaigns, including training and capacity-building for health workers to effectively address various population groups affected by CVD.