Researchers at King's College London, in collaboration with the University of Nottingham, have been selected to be part of a new national consortium to tackle inequalities in cardiovascular disease (CVD), with £50m investment from the NIHR.
King's and the University of Nottingham have partnered with Lambeth Council's NIHR‑funded Health Determinants Research Collaboration (HDRC), based in Public Health, and Boots - uniting unique strengths to offer real-world scalable solutions, build capacity and guide practice and policy to improve CVD outcomes.
CVD contributes to a quarter of all deaths in the UK (26%), with more than 170,000 deaths annually, but does not affect everyone equally. Higher risk groups include ethnic minority communities and people living in deprived communities.
The NIHR Cardiovascular Disease Inequalities Challenge Consortium, in partnership with the British Heart Foundation, will focus on tackling inequalities in these higher risk groups. It also seeks to address inequalities in CVD outcomes between women and men.
Tackling one of the UK's biggest killers
King's and the University of Nottingham join eight other university-led groups who have successfully applied to become part of the consortium, following the announcement of the funding call in May 2025.
Together they will generate evidence and innovative solutions that deliver improved detection and monitoring of undiagnosed or poorly managed high blood pressure (hypertension) and high levels of cholesterol to save thousands of lives and reduce inequalities.
Each university will collaborate with other organisations around the UK including charities, social enterprise organisations, local councils, NHS Trusts and industry, to ensure system-wide change can be delivered.
Our King's-University of Nottingham collaboration, CIRCLE-PLUS, brings together national leaders in cardiovascular epidemiology, digital health, implementation, systems science and health inequalities research, in collaboration with Boots, the UK's largest pharmacy chain, enabling extensive reach into underserved communities. Our operational expertise in community-based screening and management for hypertension and cholesterol aims to deliver innovative models of care linking primary care, public health - Lambeth NIHR-funded HDRC, and communities for embedding research in local systems aligned with community priorities.
Professor Krishnarajah Nirantharakumar, Clinical Professor in Public Health and Health Data Science at King's
By bringing together academic, clinical, public health, multi-sectoral primary care, pharmacy and community expertise from across the UK, we will be able to generate evidence and innovative solutions that deliver improved prevention, detection and management of hypertension and raised cholesterol, addressing health disparities in underserved populations to save lives and reduce inequalities for optimal cardiovascular health in the whole population.
Professor Mariam Molokhia, Professor of Primary Care & Clinical Epidemiology at King's
The consortium will also have a major focus on developing research capacity to help shift the dial on CVD. They will work together to develop a programme of career development opportunities to inspire, develop and support the next generation of researchers.
The research projects will begin in autumn 2026. The consortium will build relationships with charities, the life sciences industry and patient groups with relevant expertise to deliver a plan that will have solutions to tackle health inequalities in the UK.
The success of the consortium's health outcomes objectives will be enabled by research activities such as leveraging wearables and other digital health technologies, and innovative public health messaging and education, including supporting sustained behaviour change.
King's and the University of Nottingham join the consortium with groups led by the University of Glasgow, the University of Leeds, the University of Surrey, Swansea University, the University of Birmingham, the University of Ulster, Imperial College London and the University of Bristol.
