{"counts": {"scenes": 17, "sources": 130, "journeys": 5, "instances": 132}, "scenes": [{"name": "Who the British Heart Foundation Are", "number": 1, "sceneId": "s1", "partition": "overview", "sourceUrls": ["https://www.bhf.org.uk/", "https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do", "https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/our-strategy", "https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/our-research/heart-statistics", "https://www.youtube.com/@BritishHeartFoundation", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Heart_Foundation"], "description": "A charity registered in England and Wales (225971), Scotland (SC039426) and the Isle of Man (1295), funding heart and circulatory disease research for more than sixty years. In its own words its vision is a world free from the fear of heart and circulatory diseases, and its work has four strands: funding research, providing information and support, placing defibrillators and teaching CPR, and campaigning on policy. It describes itself as the biggest independent funder of heart and circulatory research in the UK, funding around £100 million of research a year, and it runs a cardiac nurse helpline and around 640 shops, about 150 of which it announced in June 2026 it plans to close by March 2028.", "sourceCount": 6}, {"name": "The Signs, and the Difference That Matters", "number": 2, "sceneId": "s2", "partition": "guidance", "sourceUrls": ["https://www.bhf.org.uk/informationsupport/conditions/heart-attack", "https://www.bhf.org.uk/informationsupport/conditions/cardiac-arrest", "https://www.bhf.org.uk/informationsupport/conditions/heart-attack/signs-and-symptoms-of-heart-attacks-in-women", "https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/heart-attack/", "https://www.bhf.org.uk/informationsupport/conditions", "https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/coronary-heart-disease/", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkohnIY93HY", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppP6rGIfWf0", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oi_Qf47z5Pw", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardiac_arrest", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myocardial_infarction"], "description": "The most important chapter here, and the one with a genuine emergency in it. A heart attack and a cardiac arrest are not the same thing. The charity's own definition: a heart attack is a sudden loss of blood flow to part of the heart muscle; a cardiac arrest is when the heart suddenly stops pumping blood around the body. One is a blood-flow problem, the other is the heart stopping. They need different responses, and the public conflates them constantly. On the heart attack symptoms the charity lists — chest pain or discomfort that comes on suddenly and does not go away, pain spreading to either arm, the neck, jaw, upper back or stomach, feeling sick, sweaty, light-headed or short of breath — its instruction is to call 999, and it adds that you should not worry about wasting anyone's time. It also says symptoms differ between people, that you may not have all of them, and that while women and men generally experience the same symptoms, research shows women tend not to recognise them as a heart attack as quickly. This chapter indexes those pages. It does not summarise them into a checklist, because a checklist is the wrong tool for something where the correct action is a phone call.", "sourceCount": 11}, {"name": "Risk, and Which Parts of It Move", "number": 3, "sceneId": "s3", "partition": "guidance", "sourceUrls": ["https://www.bhf.org.uk/informationsupport/risk-factors", "https://www.bhf.org.uk/informationsupport/risk-factors/high-blood-pressure", "https://www.bhf.org.uk/informationsupport/risk-factors/family-history", "https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/high-blood-pressure-hypertension/", "https://www.nhs.uk/tests-and-treatments/nhs-health-check/", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3_h9gtDsqc", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvpkaxzvyiI", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statin", "https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/conditions-and-diseases/cardiovascular-conditions"], "description": "The charity's general position is that many heart and circulatory diseases are caused by risk factors that can be controlled, treated or modified — which is a more hopeful claim than it first sounds, and a more demanding one. The factors it names are high cholesterol, high blood pressure, diabetes, obesity, mental health, smoking, physical inactivity, alcohol, stress, air pollution and family history. Two honest notes. The charity says stress is not a direct risk factor but is linked to habits that raise risk, and family history cannot itself be changed, though it raises risk rather than deciding the outcome. For what to do about your own risk, the practical routes are your GP, an NHS Health Check if you are eligible, and the charity's cardiac nurse helpline.", "sourceCount": 9}, {"name": "The Scale of It", "number": 4, "sceneId": "s4", "partition": "guidance", "sourceUrls": ["https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/our-research/heart-statistics/heart-statistics-publications/cardiovascular-disease-statistics-2026", "https://www.bhf.org.uk/-/media/files/for-professionals/research/heart-statistics/bhf-cvd-statistics-uk-factsheet-jul26.pdf", "https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/heart-failure/", "https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/stroke/", "https://ourworldindata.org/cardiovascular-diseases", "https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths"], "description": "Three figures the charity states in plain text on its own homepage: over 8 million people in the UK are living with cardiovascular disease, it kills one in four people in the UK, and someone dies from a cardiovascular disease every three minutes. The detailed statistics — prevalence, mortality, deaths under 75, inequalities, costs — live in a compendium and a twice-yearly factsheet rather than on a web page, and this chapter links those rather than paraphrasing figures out of a PDF. If you need a number for a funding bid or an article, take it from the factsheet with its date attached, not from here.", "sourceCount": 6}, {"name": "CPR: Fifteen Minutes That Changes the Odds", "number": 5, "sceneId": "s5", "partition": "lifesaving", "sourceUrls": ["https://www.bhf.org.uk/how-you-can-help/how-to-save-a-life", "https://www.bhf.org.uk/how-you-can-help/how-to-save-a-life/how-to-do-cpr", "https://revivr.bhf.org.uk/", "https://www.bhf.org.uk/how-you-can-help/how-to-save-a-life/cpr-training-in-schools", "https://www.bhf.org.uk/how-you-can-help/how-to-save-a-life/how-to-do-cpr/learn-cpr-in-15-minutes/train-your-organisation-in-cpr", "https://www.youtube.com/user/ResusCouncilUK", "https://www.resus.org.uk/public-resource/how-do-cpr", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardiopulmonary_resuscitation", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chain_of_survival", "https://www.resus.org.uk/professional-library/2025-resuscitation-guidelines"], "description": "The single most useful thing in this experience, and it is free. The charity states that over 40,000 people a year have an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest in the UK and fewer than one in ten survive, and that prompt CPR together with a defibrillator can more than double the chance of survival. RevivR is its free interactive course: about fifteen minutes, on a phone or tablet, practising on a cushion, ending with a certificate and a mock 999 call. It is built for adult CPR; child and baby CPR have separate instructions. There is also a schools programme and a version organisations can use to train staff. Most chapters in most experiences are things to know. This one is a thing to do, and the argument for doing it is arithmetic rather than sentiment.", "sourceCount": 10}, {"name": "Defibrillators, and the Map Nobody Had", "number": 6, "sceneId": "s6", "partition": "lifesaving", "sourceUrls": ["https://www.bhf.org.uk/how-you-can-help/how-to-save-a-life/defibrillators", "https://www.bhf.org.uk/how-you-can-help/how-to-save-a-life/defibrillators/national-defibrillator-network-the-circuit", "https://www.defibfinder.uk/", "https://www.bhf.org.uk/how-you-can-help/how-to-save-a-life/defibrillators/apply-for-a-free-defibrillator-for-your-community", "https://www.resus.org.uk/public-resource/defibrillation", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automated_external_defibrillator", "https://www.resus.org.uk/additional-guidance/guidance-defibrillators"], "description": "A defibrillator that nobody can find is a defibrillator that does not exist. The Circuit is the national defibrillator network: a map that ambulance services consult when a 999 caller reports a cardiac arrest, so the call handler can send a bystander to the nearest one. Over 100,000 are registered on it, and the charity estimates tens of thousands more are not. The reason this matters is in the charity's own figure: every minute without CPR and defibrillation reduces the chance of survival by up to ten per cent. Registering one is free and takes minutes, and an unregistered device also means its guardian gets no maintenance reminders. If you know of a defibrillator at a workplace, a village hall or a gym, checking whether it is on the map is a genuinely useful afternoon.", "sourceCount": 7}, {"name": "Where the Money Comes From", "number": 7, "sceneId": "s7", "partition": "money", "sourceUrls": ["https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/annual-report", "https://www.bhf.org.uk/-/media/files/british_heart_foundation_annual_report.pdf?rev=f5a0f7e6cbc84cbb8b597f14953a397c", "https://www.bhf.org.uk/how-you-can-help/leave-a-gift-in-your-will", "https://www.bhf.org.uk/how-you-can-help", "https://www.cardiomyopathy.org/"], "description": "Overwhelmingly from the public, and unusually from the dead. In 2025/26 the charity raised £175.3m, of which £105.5m came from legacies — gifts in wills — and £62.1m from fundraising, which it describes as a record. The year before, 2024/25, it raised £181m on a breakdown of £108.4m legacies, £58.2m fundraising, £10.8m investments and other, and £3.6m from trading. That trading line is the net figure in that breakdown rather than what the shops turn over, and the annual report is where to understand the retail operation properly. Note the two years carefully: the charity publishes figures on both and they are not interchangeable.", "sourceCount": 5}, {"name": "Where the Money Goes", "number": 8, "sceneId": "s8", "partition": "money", "sourceUrls": ["https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/where-your-money-goes", "https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/our-research/research-funding-across-the-uk-visualisations", "https://www.bhf.org.uk/-/media/files/for-professionals/research/bhf_60-years-of-pioneering-research-and-innovation-(1).pdf", "https://www.bhf.org.uk/informationsupport", "https://www.c-r-y.org.uk/"], "description": "In 2025/26 total spending was £200.7m, including £103.3m on research (£96.2m after accounting adjustments), £54.2m on health information and support, and £50.3m invested to grow future income. For 2024/25 the charity publishes a cleaner ratio: of every £1 raised, 72p went directly to beating cardiovascular disease and 28p was reinvested to generate future funds. Its donation pages state at least 70p in every £1. That last 28p is the line a sceptical donor asks about, and the charity publishes it rather than hiding it — which is the right way to be judged on it.", "sourceCount": 5}, {"name": "The Researchers, and Their Universities", "number": 9, "sceneId": "s9", "partition": "research", "sourceUrls": ["https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/our-research/our-top-professors", "https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/our-research/our-top-professors/professor-charalambos-antoniades", "https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/our-research/our-top-professors/professor-john-danesh", "https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/our-research/our-top-professors/professor-hugh-watkins", "https://www.bhf.org.uk/for-professionals/information-for-researchers", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart_failure", "https://www.escardio.org/"], "description": "This is where the university partnership question gets a concrete answer, and it is a better answer than most charities can give. The charity names 23 professors it funds, with their institutions: Oxford, Cambridge, Edinburgh, Imperial, King's College London, Leicester, Bristol, Leeds, Manchester and Queen Mary University of London. Research Professorships have been awarded since 2025 and Personal Chairs were awarded until 2024. Among them: Charalambos Antoniades at Oxford on how fat around the arteries signals to the heart, using AI across genetic, molecular and imaging data; John Danesh at Cambridge on how these diseases develop in multi-ethnic groups, which connects directly to Sohel's account later in this experience; Hugh Watkins at Oxford, who leads CureHeart. One honest limitation: these profile pages are factual rather than personal, and none carries a quotation from the researcher. For researchers in their own words, the chapter on people is where to go.", "sourceCount": 7}, {"name": "CureHeart, and the Big Bets", "number": 10, "sceneId": "s10", "partition": "research", "sourceUrls": ["https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/our-research/cureheart", "https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/our-research/cardiovascular-grand-challenges", "https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/news-from-the-bhf/news-archive/2024/december/transformational-new-gene-therapy-research-centre-launched", "https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/our-research", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardiomyopathy", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypertrophic_cardiomyopathy"], "description": "The charity's biggest ever research grant: £30 million awarded in 2022 to Hugh Watkins at Oxford and Christine Seidman at Harvard, jointly leading an international team developing gene therapies that could edit or silence the faulty genes behind inherited heart muscle diseases. Alongside it sits a planned series of Cardiovascular Grand Challenges over five years. Read these pages with their tense attached: CureHeart aims to deliver a cure and is moving towards testing in patients. It has not cured anyone yet, and the charity says so. The honest version of this chapter is a serious, well-funded attempt in progress — which is a better thing to pitch than a breakthrough that has not happened.", "sourceCount": 6}, {"name": "Trials, Impact, and a Note on Attribution", "number": 11, "sceneId": "s11", "partition": "research", "sourceUrls": ["https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/our-research/impact-of-clinical-trials", "https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/our-research/research-successes", "https://www.bhf.org.uk/research-projects", "https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/our-research/research-successes/our-research-impact-reports", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJ_pvMkhEXE", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atrial_fibrillation", "https://www.cardiomyopathy.org/about-cardiomyopathy/related-disorders/myocarditis"], "description": "How research reaches patients, and the chapter where this experience is most careful. The charity funds clinical studies and translational awards through committees that meet twice a year, publishes interactive maps of where its research and trials are funded across the UK, and runs a searchable directory of funded projects. On what it has achieved, its research-successes page speaks of clot-busting drugs, transplants and small devices to correct heartbeats, and uses hedged language throughout — our research has helped, helped transform, is helping develop. That hedging is appropriate, because cardiovascular medicine advanced through many funders at once. But unlike some charities the page does not spell out an attribution caveat, so this experience supplies one: these are contributions to fields, not sole credit for results, and the specific claims worth quoting are the funded professorships, the named programmes and the audited spend rather than any individual breakthrough.", "sourceCount": 7}, {"name": "Commercialisation and Policy", "number": 12, "sceneId": "s12", "partition": "research", "sourceUrls": ["https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/news-from-the-bhf/news-archive/2024/march/bhf-partners-with-panacea-innovation-to-launch-cardiostars", "https://www.bhf.org.uk/for-professionals/information-for-researchers/our-research-strategy", "https://www.bhf.org.uk/informationsupport/our-online-community", "https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/policy-and-public-affairs", "https://www.c-r-y.org.uk/cry-responds-to-the-national-screening-committee-opening-consultation-on-screening-for-cardiac-conditions-associated-with-sudden-cardiac-death/", "https://www.c-r-y.org.uk/largest-ever-study-of-cardiac-screening-in-young-people-shows-heart-checks-save-lives/", "https://www.c-r-y.org.uk/screening"], "description": "The two least visible parts of the organisation. On commercialisation, CardioStars is a partnership launched in 2024 with Panacea Innovation to help translate cardiovascular research towards products and companies — a smaller and younger operation than the equivalent at some research charities, and worth understanding as an early-stage effort rather than a mature pipeline. On policy, the charity works with governments across the UK on prevention, diagnosis and NHS capacity. A meaningful share of what a health charity achieves is not a discovery at all but a regulation, and any account that omits this is incomplete.", "sourceCount": 7}, {"name": "The Events People Raise Money At", "number": 13, "sceneId": "s13", "partition": "fundraising", "sourceUrls": ["https://www.bhf.org.uk/how-you-can-help/events", "https://www.bhf.org.uk/how-you-can-help/events/bike-rides/london-to-brighton-bike-ride", "https://www.bhf.org.uk/how-you-can-help/fundraise", "https://www.bhf.org.uk/how-you-can-help/fundraise/dechox", "https://www.bhf.org.uk/how-you-can-help/support-our-campaigns/heart-month", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYJL8o8fBFE", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iU3LyckqZkI"], "description": "The charity's signature event is the London to Brighton Bike Ride, now joined by an off-road version, alongside places at a long list of mass-participation runs — Brighton Marathon, the Bath, Hackney, Big Half, Manchester and Royal Parks half marathons, the Great Manchester Run, the Edinburgh Marathon Festival. There are also free virtual challenges such as the Heart MOT Challenge, and self-organised fundraising including DECHOX, the sponsored month without chocolate. The practical point of this chapter: the question is rarely whether to support the charity and almost always whether something is happening near you on a free weekend.", "sourceCount": 7}, {"name": "The Charity Shops", "number": 14, "sceneId": "s14", "partition": "fundraising", "sourceUrls": ["https://www.bhf.org.uk/shop/donating-goods/donate-to-charity-shops", "https://www.bhf.org.uk/shop/donating-goods/book-furniture-collection-near-me", "https://www.bhf.org.uk/shop/donating-goods/post-your-donations", "https://www.bhf.org.uk/shop", "https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/find-bhf-near-you", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TiM4e43a6KY", "https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/news-from-the-bhf/news-archive/2026/june/bhf-proposes-150-shop-closures-to-maintain-sustainable-retail-network"], "description": "Around 640 shops, still one of the largest charity retail estates in the UK, though in June 2026 the charity announced plans to close about 150 of them by March 2028. They sell donated clothes, accessories, homeware, toys, media, furniture, electricals and technology. The mechanisms worth knowing are practical: retail Gift Aid makes a donation worth 25 per cent more than whatever the item sells for, at no cost to you; furniture, electricals and homeware can be collected free from your home; and small items can be posted free through a Collect+ drop-off. There is also a list of what the shops cannot take, and checking it before you load the car is itself a small kindness, because unsellable items cost the charity money to dispose of.", "sourceCount": 7}, {"name": "Volunteering", "number": 15, "sceneId": "s15", "partition": "fundraising", "sourceUrls": ["https://www.bhf.org.uk/how-you-can-help/volunteer", "https://www.bhf.org.uk/how-you-can-help/volunteer/volunteer-in-our-shops", "https://myvolunteer.bhf.org.uk/event/list", "https://www.bhf.org.uk/how-you-can-help/volunteer/action-team", "https://www.bhf.org.uk/how-you-can-help/volunteer/volunteer-faqs", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7_ffTixemk", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGbm15BDcnQ", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyZv-0rug9A", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCCQ1HlsQX8"], "description": "Six routes in: the shops, local fundraising groups, event roles such as handing out medals and staffing cheer points, the Action Team for one-off opportunities, the Duke of Edinburgh's Award, and workplace volunteering. Opportunities are searchable on the charity's own volunteer portal. The charity's volunteer pages do not state a minimum commitment or an age limit, so this chapter does not invent one — the FAQ page is linked for anyone who needs the specifics. What the charity does publish, unusually well, is named volunteers talking about why they do it, and those accounts are in the chapter on people rather than summarised here.", "sourceCount": 9}, {"name": "People, In Their Own Published Words", "number": 16, "sceneId": "s16", "partition": "people", "sourceUrls": ["https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/news-from-the-bhf/news-archive/2026/september/cardiac-arrest-survivor-meets-cureheart-scientist-world-heart-day", "https://www.bhf.org.uk/how-you-can-help/support-our-campaigns/heart-month/sohels-story", "https://www.bhf.org.uk/keep-us-beating/deans-story", "https://www.bhf.org.uk/informationsupport/heart-matters-magazine/my-story/helen-and-maddy-story", "https://www.bhf.org.uk/how-you-can-help/volunteer/volunteer-stories/the-heart-lady-celebrates-40-years-with-bhf", "https://www.bhf.org.uk/how-you-can-help/volunteer/volunteer-stories/amy-lowe-volunteering-opened-a-massive-door-in-my-life", "https://www.bhf.org.uk/how-you-can-help/volunteer/volunteer-stories", "https://www.c-r-y.org.uk/my-story/", "https://www.c-r-y.org.uk/michelle-mcfeely-mystory/", "https://www.c-r-y.org.uk/craig-salmon-mystory/", "https://www.c-r-y.org.uk/hannah-taylor-mystory/", "http://www.myheart.org.uk", "https://healthunlocked.com/bhf"], "description": "Every person here is named because they or the charity chose to publish their account, and every quotation comes from those pages. Nothing is composite or dramatised. Jack Taylor, 20, from Nottingham, collapsed playing basketball at 17 in February 2024 with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy linked to the MYBPC3 gene; he met Hugh Watkins, who leads CureHeart, in September 2026, and said that hearing about the research made him not only grateful but also hopeful, and that hopefully one day he will be cured of this, but more importantly, the next generation. Watkins said it was really special meeting Jack, and that by the time Jack has children he really hopes they will have found a cure. Sohel had a cardiac arrest at his gym at 47, triggered by a heart attack; his instructor Mike gave CPR until paramedics arrived with a defibrillator, he had a triple bypass, and he later ran a 5k with his son Solly for the charity. He said that within the South Asian community he does not think many people know about heart attacks, and that he believes we need more funding for this research — research which, on the charity's own page, is Professor John Danesh's. Dean, a strength and conditioning coach from Harrogate, mistook a heart attack for heartburn for several days in November 2024 before calling NHS 111; his line is the whole case for the second chapter of this experience: not recognising heart attack symptoms left me close to death. Helen had a cardiac arrest at 53 while salsa dancing and was saved by bystander CPR and a defibrillator at the venue; she said she was so lucky that the people around her worked together to save her life, and her daughter Maddy, then sitting A-levels, said she learned she is strong and can cope. And Shirley West of Guildford, 79, has volunteered for 40 years, chairs the local fundraising group, holds the British Empire Medal, and says her approach is to put the fun into fundraising. One necessary note: these are people who survived, and the charity publishes them because they are encouraging. Fewer than one in ten people survive an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest. Both things are true and this chapter holds them together.", "sourceCount": 14}, {"name": "How to Give, and Where to Get Support", "number": 17, "sceneId": "s17", "partition": "action", "sourceUrls": ["https://www.bhf.org.uk/informationsupport/heart-helpline", "https://www.bhf.org.uk/how-you-can-help/donate", "https://www.bhf.org.uk/how-you-can-help/donate/your-donation", "https://www.bhf.org.uk/how-you-can-help/donate/gift-aid", "https://www.bhf.org.uk/how-you-can-help/donate/give-in-memory", "https://www.bhf.org.uk/how-you-can-help/donate/donate-through-your-salary", "https://www.resus.org.uk/public-resource/support-after-cardiac-arrest", "https://www.resus.org.uk/publications/support-after-cardiac-arrest-discharge-resource"], "description": "Every link here is a real British Heart Foundation page, checked rather than reconstructed. Giving: a one-off or regular donation, Gift Aid on anything you already give, a gift in memory, a gift in a will — which is the charity's single largest income source at £105.5m in 2025/26 — donating through your salary, the weekly lottery, or donated goods. Support, which matters just as much and is easier to miss: cardiac nurses on the Heart Helpline, 0808 802 1234, Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm; a moderated online community; and practical guidance on living with a heart condition, from driving to travel to returning to exercise. If you came to this experience worried rather than generous, the helpline is the one to use.", "sourceCount": 9}], "sources": [{"url": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/", "type": "webpage", "title": "British Heart Foundation", "summary": "The charity's front door, and where three of the headline figures in this experience are stated in plain text rather than buried in a download: over 8 million people in the UK living with cardiovascular disease, one in four deaths, and someone dying from it every three minutes. Worth a minute first, because the charity's own account should come before anyone else's.", "duration": "5 minutes", "integrity": "standalone", "publisher": "www.bhf.org.uk"}, {"url": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do", "type": "webpage", "title": "What we do", "summary": "The charity's own summary of its four strands — research, information and support, CPR and defibrillators, and policy — with the figures it chooses to lead with: over £100m of research funded a year, £437m of research currently in progress, at least 70p in every £1 reaching lifesaving work, over 100,000 defibrillators on The Circuit, 200,000 people reached by its CPR training, and a shop count that predates the closures announced in June 2026. The registration numbers are here too, which is how you verify any claim made about them, including the ones in this experience.", "duration": "12 minutes", "integrity": "standalone", "publisher": "www.bhf.org.uk"}, {"url": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/our-strategy", "type": "webpage", "title": "Our strategy", "summary": "The stated plan, which is the fairer way to judge an organisation than its achievements page: not what it has done but what it says it is trying to do next, and whether that is measurable. Read it, then read the annual report, and see whether the two agree.", "duration": "15 minutes", "integrity": "dependent", "publisher": "www.bhf.org.uk"}, {"url": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/informationsupport/conditions/heart-attack", "type": "webpage", "title": "Heart attack", "summary": "The primary source for this chapter and the most important page in the experience. It lists the symptoms, instructs you to call 999, and adds that you should not worry about wasting anyone's time. It also states that symptoms differ between people, that you may not have all of them, and that although women and men generally experience the same symptoms, research shows women tend not to recognise them as a heart attack as quickly. Read the page itself; the context around each symptom is what makes it useful rather than frightening.", "duration": "15 minutes", "integrity": "standalone", "publisher": "www.bhf.org.uk"}, {"url": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/informationsupport/conditions/cardiac-arrest", "type": "webpage", "title": "Cardiac arrest", "summary": "The other condition, and the distinction this chapter exists for. A cardiac arrest is the heart suddenly stopping; a heart attack is a loss of blood flow to part of the heart muscle. The response differs: a cardiac arrest needs CPR and a defibrillator, immediately, from whoever is there. The NHS links to this very page from its own heart attack guidance, which is a fair indication of how authoritative it is considered.", "duration": "12 minutes", "integrity": "standalone", "publisher": "www.bhf.org.uk"}, {"url": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/informationsupport/conditions/heart-attack/signs-and-symptoms-of-heart-attacks-in-women", "type": "webpage", "title": "Heart attack symptoms in women", "summary": "The charity's dedicated page. Its position is that women and men generally experience the same symptoms, but that research shows women tend not to recognise them as a heart attack as quickly — which is why the page exists.", "duration": "12 minutes", "integrity": "dependent", "publisher": "www.bhf.org.uk"}, {"url": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/informationsupport/conditions", "type": "webpage", "title": "Conditions A to Z", "summary": "The full index, from coronary heart disease and heart failure to atrial fibrillation, stroke and spontaneous coronary artery dissection. The point of linking the index rather than a selection: there are many conditions under the heading of heart and circulatory disease, and a specific condition is almost always the real question.", "duration": "15 minutes", "integrity": "dependent", "publisher": "www.bhf.org.uk"}, {"url": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/informationsupport/risk-factors", "type": "webpage", "title": "Risk factors", "summary": "The charity's hub, naming high cholesterol, high blood pressure, diabetes, obesity, mental health, smoking, physical inactivity, alcohol, stress, air pollution and family history, with its framing that many of these diseases are caused by risk factors that can be controlled, treated or modified. Note that it calls stress an indirect factor rather than a direct one.", "duration": "15 minutes", "integrity": "standalone", "publisher": "www.bhf.org.uk"}, {"url": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/informationsupport/risk-factors/high-blood-pressure", "type": "webpage", "title": "High blood pressure", "summary": "The factor with the widest gap between how easy it is to measure and how often it goes unmeasured. The charity's line on it is blunt — knowing your blood pressure could save your life — and it supplies a home chart and diary for tracking readings. Of all the pages in this chapter, this is the one most likely to change something.", "duration": "12 minutes", "integrity": "dependent", "publisher": "www.bhf.org.uk"}, {"url": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/informationsupport/risk-factors/family-history", "type": "webpage", "title": "Family history", "summary": "Included deliberately, because it is the factor people assume is a verdict. The charity says these diseases can run in families. Family history itself cannot be changed, but it raises risk rather than deciding the outcome, and the other factors in this chapter can still be controlled or treated. If a close relative died suddenly and young, ask your GP about referral to an NHS inherited cardiac conditions service. Relevant background to Jack Taylor's account later in this experience.", "duration": "10 minutes", "integrity": "dependent", "publisher": "www.bhf.org.uk"}, {"url": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/how-you-can-help/how-to-save-a-life", "type": "webpage", "title": "How to save a life", "summary": "The hub for the charity's CPR and defibrillator work: step-by-step CPR guidance, how to recognise a cardiac arrest, training for schools and organisations, the defibrillator pages and a funded defibrillator scheme for eligible community groups. Start here, then do the fifteen-minute course. This chapter is the reason to send someone this experience who has no interest whatsoever in charities.", "duration": "10 minutes", "integrity": "standalone", "publisher": "www.bhf.org.uk"}, {"url": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/how-you-can-help/how-to-save-a-life/how-to-do-cpr", "type": "webpage", "title": "How to do CPR", "summary": "The written instructions, for reading before you need them and for the uncomfortable fact that most people have seen CPR performed only on television. Covers adult CPR and points to the separate guidance for children and babies, which differs and matters.", "duration": "12 minutes", "integrity": "dependent", "publisher": "www.bhf.org.uk"}, {"url": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/how-you-can-help/how-to-save-a-life/cpr-training-in-schools", "type": "webpage", "title": "CPR training in schools", "summary": "The charity's schools programme, which is the quiet long game: teaching a cohort of teenagers CPR produces a population that can respond decades later. Relevant to Sohel's account, where it was a gym instructor who knew what to do, and to Helen's, where it was fellow dancers.", "duration": "10 minutes", "integrity": "dependent", "publisher": "www.bhf.org.uk"}, {"url": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/how-you-can-help/how-to-save-a-life/defibrillators", "type": "webpage", "title": "Defibrillators", "summary": "What they are, what they do, how to use one, and the thing most people need told: a defibrillator will not let you shock someone who does not need it, and you cannot make things worse by fetching one. Read this alongside the CPR pages; in a cardiac arrest the two are a single action, not alternatives.", "duration": "12 minutes", "integrity": "standalone", "publisher": "www.bhf.org.uk"}, {"url": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/how-you-can-help/how-to-save-a-life/defibrillators/national-defibrillator-network-the-circuit", "type": "webpage", "title": "The Circuit: the national defibrillator network", "summary": "The map ambulance services consult in a cardiac arrest call. Over 100,000 devices registered, and tens of thousands the charity believes are not. The figure that makes the case: every minute without CPR and defibrillation reduces survival by up to ten per cent, so a device that is present but unmapped may as well be absent. Registration is free and also brings maintenance reminders for whoever looks after it.", "duration": "12 minutes", "integrity": "standalone", "publisher": "www.bhf.org.uk"}, {"url": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/how-you-can-help/how-to-save-a-life/defibrillators/apply-for-a-free-defibrillator-for-your-community", "type": "webpage", "title": "Apply for a defibrillator for your community", "summary": "The charity's funded scheme for eligible community groups. Included because this chapter should not end at awareness: if you have read the survival arithmetic and your village hall or sports club has no device, this is the page that does something about it. Check the current application window on the page itself.", "duration": "10 minutes", "integrity": "dependent", "publisher": "www.bhf.org.uk"}, {"url": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/annual-report", "type": "webpage", "title": "Annual report", "summary": "The summary of the audited accounts and the most checkable thing the charity publishes. For 2025/26: £175.3m raised, of which £105.5m from legacies and a record £62.1m from fundraising; £103.3m spent on research, £96.2m after accounting adjustments; total spending £200.7m. Any figure in this experience can be audited against this page and the full report linked from it.", "duration": "20 minutes", "integrity": "standalone", "publisher": "www.bhf.org.uk"}, {"url": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/how-you-can-help/leave-a-gift-in-your-will", "type": "webpage", "title": "Leaving a gift in your will", "summary": "Placed in the income chapter rather than the donation one because of what the accounts show: at £105.5m in 2025/26, legacies are comfortably the charity's largest single income source — larger than all fundraising combined. That is a remarkable dependency and worth understanding before judging anything else about how the organisation raises money.", "duration": "12 minutes", "integrity": "dependent", "publisher": "www.bhf.org.uk"}, {"url": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/how-you-can-help", "type": "webpage", "title": "How you can help", "summary": "The whole menu of ways money and time reach the charity, which is the aggregate behind the £62.1m fundraising line. Included here to make the structure of the income legible before the chapters that break each route down.", "duration": "10 minutes", "integrity": "dependent", "publisher": "www.bhf.org.uk"}, {"url": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/where-your-money-goes", "type": "webpage", "title": "Where your money goes", "summary": "The clearest ratio the charity publishes, for 2024/25: of every £1 raised, 72p went directly to beating cardiovascular disease and 28p was reinvested to generate future funds. Underneath that, £197.5m of mission spending, £108.4m committed to research, £47.2m on health information and support, £51.4m invested to grow income. The 28p is the number a sceptic asks about and the charity prints it, which is the right way to be held to it.", "duration": "12 minutes", "integrity": "standalone", "publisher": "www.bhf.org.uk"}, {"url": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/informationsupport", "type": "webpage", "title": "Information and support", "summary": "What £54.2m of non-research spending actually buys, and the part of the charity a patient meets. Condition guidance, test and treatment explainers, practical help on driving, travel, work and exercise, emotional support, and the Heart Matters magazine. An honest account of a research charity has to include what else it pays for.", "duration": "15 minutes", "integrity": "dependent", "publisher": "www.bhf.org.uk"}, {"url": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/how-you-can-help/events", "type": "webpage", "title": "Events", "summary": "The events calendar: the London to Brighton Bike Ride and its off-road sibling, plus charity places at the Brighton Marathon, the Bath, Hackney, Big Half, Manchester and Royal Parks halves, the Great Manchester Run and the Edinburgh Marathon Festival, and free virtual challenges. Searchable by date and type, which is the only question most people actually have.", "duration": "10 minutes", "integrity": "standalone", "publisher": "www.bhf.org.uk"}, {"url": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/how-you-can-help/events/bike-rides/london-to-brighton-bike-ride", "type": "webpage", "title": "London to Brighton Bike Ride", "summary": "The charity's signature event, and the one with the longest institutional history. Fifty-four miles from Clapham Common to Brighton seafront, in a field of thousands. Included as the concrete example: this is what the fundraising line in the accounts looks like on the ground.", "duration": "8 minutes", "integrity": "dependent", "publisher": "www.bhf.org.uk"}, {"url": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/how-you-can-help/fundraise", "type": "webpage", "title": "Fundraise your own way", "summary": "For everything not on the calendar — a collection, a quiz, a workplace challenge, a birthday. The practical scaffolding, including how to set up a page and pay money in. Most fundraising looks far more like this than like a mass-participation bike ride.", "duration": "10 minutes", "integrity": "standalone", "publisher": "www.bhf.org.uk"}, {"url": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/how-you-can-help/fundraise/dechox", "type": "webpage", "title": "DECHOX", "summary": "A sponsored month without chocolate, which is a more serious proposition than it sounds and a good illustration of how mass fundraising actually works: a simple, shareable, slightly silly commitment that a lot of people will complete. Optional.", "duration": "6 minutes", "integrity": "subsidiary", "publisher": "www.bhf.org.uk"}, {"url": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/how-you-can-help/support-our-campaigns/heart-month", "type": "webpage", "title": "Heart Month", "summary": "The charity's annual February campaign, and where several of the published personal accounts in this experience were first gathered. Useful for seeing how a charity sources stories with consent rather than taking them.", "duration": "8 minutes", "integrity": "dependent", "publisher": "www.bhf.org.uk"}, {"url": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/shop/donating-goods/donate-to-charity-shops", "type": "webpage", "title": "Donate items to our shops", "summary": "What the shops take: clothes, accessories, jewellery, homeware, kitchenware, toys, games, vinyl and media, and technology including phones, laptops and tablets, with a separate guide on wiping a phone before donating it. Also the list of what cannot be accepted, which is worth reading first because unsellable donations cost the charity money to dispose of.", "duration": "10 minutes", "integrity": "standalone", "publisher": "www.bhf.org.uk"}, {"url": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/shop/donating-goods/book-furniture-collection-near-me", "type": "webpage", "title": "Book a free furniture collection", "summary": "The part of the retail operation that distinguishes it: a free home collection for furniture, electricals and homeware, which is how a charity sells things too large to carry into a shop. If you are clearing a house or replacing a sofa, this is the page.", "duration": "8 minutes", "integrity": "dependent", "publisher": "www.bhf.org.uk"}, {"url": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/shop/donating-goods/post-your-donations", "type": "webpage", "title": "Post your donations free", "summary": "A freepost label and a Collect+ drop-off, for small items and for anyone without a shop nearby. The least known of the donation routes and the easiest. Optional.", "duration": "6 minutes", "integrity": "subsidiary", "publisher": "www.bhf.org.uk"}, {"url": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/shop", "type": "webpage", "title": "The online shop", "summary": "New goods and donated items sold online, alongside the physical shops. Included for completeness: buying is a legitimate way to support the charity, and for some people an easier one than giving.", "duration": "6 minutes", "integrity": "subsidiary", "publisher": "www.bhf.org.uk"}, {"url": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/news-from-the-bhf/news-archive/2026/june/bhf-proposes-150-shop-closures-to-maintain-sustainable-retail-network", "type": "webpage", "title": "Shop closures announced in 2026", "summary": "The charity's own announcement, in June 2026, of proposals to close around 150 shops and stores over two financial years — about 90 by the end of March 2027 and the rest by March 2028 — citing rising operating costs and changing customer habits. Read every shop figure in this experience with this attached: the retail estate is being cut back to keep it commercially sustainable.", "duration": "6 minutes", "integrity": "dependent", "publisher": "www.bhf.org.uk"}, {"url": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/how-you-can-help/volunteer", "type": "webpage", "title": "Volunteer", "summary": "The hub for all six routes: shops, local fundraising groups, events, the Action Team, the Duke of Edinburgh's Award and workplace volunteering. The page is explicit that opportunities are flexible and any amount of time helps, and notably does not state a minimum commitment or age limit — so check the FAQ rather than assuming either way.", "duration": "10 minutes", "integrity": "standalone", "publisher": "www.bhf.org.uk"}, {"url": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/how-you-can-help/volunteer/volunteer-in-our-shops", "type": "webpage", "title": "Volunteer in our shops", "summary": "The largest single volunteering route, and the backbone of the shop estate. Sorting and pricing stock, serving customers, building displays. Read it alongside Amy Lowe's and Kel Hughes's accounts in the chapter on people — both started here and both ended up employed.", "duration": "10 minutes", "integrity": "standalone", "publisher": "www.bhf.org.uk"}, {"url": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/how-you-can-help/volunteer/action-team", "type": "webpage", "title": "The Action Team", "summary": "For one-off volunteering rather than a standing commitment: you join a list and hear about opportunities as they come up. The honest option for people who want to help but cannot promise a regular slot, which is most people.", "duration": "6 minutes", "integrity": "dependent", "publisher": "www.bhf.org.uk"}, {"url": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/how-you-can-help/volunteer/volunteer-faqs", "type": "webpage", "title": "Volunteering FAQs", "summary": "Where the specifics the main pages omit actually live — commitment, references, expenses, age requirements. Linked rather than summarised precisely because this experience will not invent a rule the charity has not published.", "duration": "8 minutes", "integrity": "subsidiary", "publisher": "www.bhf.org.uk"}, {"url": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/informationsupport/heart-helpline", "type": "webpage", "title": "The Heart Helpline", "summary": "Cardiac nurses on 0808 802 1234, freephone, Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm. This is the service to use if you arrived here worried rather than generous. Not an emergency line — for a suspected heart attack or cardiac arrest the answer is 999.", "duration": "6 minutes", "integrity": "standalone", "publisher": "www.bhf.org.uk"}, {"url": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/how-you-can-help/donate", "type": "webpage", "title": "Donate", "summary": "The charity's main donation page and the correct starting point. One-off or regular by card, Apple Pay, Google Pay, PayPal or Direct Debit; Gift Aid; text to donate; by post; through your salary; shares; in memory; the weekly lottery and raffle; and donated goods. It states that at least 70p of every £1 goes to lifesaving research and that Gift Aid adds 25 per cent at no cost to you. Every link in this chapter was checked against this page rather than reconstructed.", "duration": "8 minutes", "integrity": "standalone", "publisher": "www.bhf.org.uk"}, {"url": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/how-you-can-help/donate/gift-aid", "type": "webpage", "title": "Gift Aid", "summary": "The mechanism that quietly improves almost everything else here. On a cash gift from a UK taxpayer the charity reclaims 25 per cent at no cost to you; on goods you donate to a shop, Gift Aid makes the donation worth 25 per cent more than whatever the item sells for. Five minutes of reading that changes the arithmetic of every other way of giving in this experience.", "duration": "8 minutes", "integrity": "standalone", "publisher": "www.bhf.org.uk"}, {"url": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/how-you-can-help/donate/give-in-memory", "type": "webpage", "title": "Giving in memory", "summary": "For donations in someone's name, including funeral collections and tribute pages, and the Heart of Steel memorial on which a name can be engraved from £30. Handled with more care than most pages on the site. If you are here for this reason, this is the page you want rather than the general form.", "duration": "8 minutes", "integrity": "dependent", "publisher": "www.bhf.org.uk"}, {"url": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/how-you-can-help/donate/donate-through-your-salary", "type": "webpage", "title": "Donating through your salary", "summary": "Giving from pay before tax through an employer's scheme, which costs the donor less per pound received than a standard gift. The least-used efficient option in the charity's range, and if you are employed and already give monthly, probably the highest-leverage five minutes in this chapter.", "duration": "6 minutes", "integrity": "subsidiary", "publisher": "www.bhf.org.uk"}, {"url": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/policy-and-public-affairs", "type": "webpage", "title": "Policy and public affairs", "summary": "The charity's work with governments across the UK on prevention, diagnosis, treatment and NHS capacity. The least visible part of the organisation and a material part of what it achieves: a regulation on smoking, food or air quality can affect more people than any single trial. An account that omits this is incomplete.", "duration": "15 minutes", "integrity": "standalone", "publisher": "www.bhf.org.uk"}, {"url": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/informationsupport/our-online-community", "type": "webpage", "title": "Our online community", "summary": "A moderated forum for people living with heart conditions and those around them. Included in this chapter because it is the other thing the information-and-support budget pays for, and because for someone newly diagnosed at two in the morning it is worth more than a statistic.", "duration": "8 minutes", "integrity": "subsidiary", "publisher": "www.bhf.org.uk"}, {"url": "https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/heart-attack/", "type": "webpage", "title": "NHS: Heart attack", "summary": "The NHS's own guidance, included alongside the charity's so you can see two independent official sources agreeing. Its emergency box is headed Immediate action required: call 999 if, and it adds an instruction the charity's page does not: do not drive yourself to A and E. It also distinguishes cardiac arrest from heart attack and links to the charity's cardiac arrest page to explain it.", "duration": "15 minutes", "integrity": "standalone", "publisher": "www.nhs.uk"}, {"url": "https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/coronary-heart-disease/", "type": "webpage", "title": "NHS: Coronary heart disease", "summary": "The underlying disease behind most heart attacks, and the context that makes the symptom lists comprehensible rather than arbitrary. The NHS is the body that actually treats people in the UK, so on any question about your own care its guidance is the operative one.", "duration": "15 minutes", "integrity": "dependent", "publisher": "www.nhs.uk"}, {"url": "https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/high-blood-pressure-hypertension/", "type": "webpage", "title": "NHS: High blood pressure", "summary": "The NHS view of the same risk factor, including when and how to get checked — which is the step the charity's own risk page does not spell out. Pair the two: the charity explains why it matters, the NHS tells you what to do about it.", "duration": "12 minutes", "integrity": "dependent", "publisher": "www.nhs.uk"}, {"url": "https://www.nhs.uk/tests-and-treatments/nhs-health-check/", "type": "webpage", "title": "NHS Health Check", "summary": "A free check for adults in England aged 40 to 74, covering blood pressure, cholesterol and cardiovascular risk. This is the concrete answer to how do I find out my risk, and it is the link in this chapter most likely to be acted on. If you have had a letter about one and not booked it, this is your nudge.", "duration": "12 minutes", "integrity": "standalone", "publisher": "www.nhs.uk"}, {"url": "https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/heart-failure/", "type": "webpage", "title": "NHS: Heart failure", "summary": "Included in the statistics chapter rather than the symptoms one because of what the numbers conceal: heart and circulatory disease is not one condition, and aggregate mortality figures hide completely different illnesses with different trajectories. Heart failure is the clearest example of a condition people live with for years.", "duration": "15 minutes", "integrity": "subsidiary", "publisher": "www.nhs.uk"}, {"url": "https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/stroke/", "type": "webpage", "title": "NHS: Stroke", "summary": "Circulatory disease of the brain, included because it sits inside the charity's remit and outside most people's mental model of a heart charity. Stroke has its own time-critical recognition test and its own emergency pathway, both on this page.", "duration": "15 minutes", "integrity": "subsidiary", "publisher": "www.nhs.uk"}, {"url": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/our-research/heart-statistics", "type": "webpage", "title": "Heart statistics", "summary": "The charity's statistics hub, and the source to cite rather than any secondary summary. Be aware of its shape before using it: the headline numbers are in a twice-yearly factsheet and an annual compendium rather than on the page itself, so quoting from here means quoting from a dated document, which is the correct way to do it anyway.", "duration": "12 minutes", "integrity": "standalone", "publisher": "www.bhf.org.uk"}, {"url": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/our-research/heart-statistics/heart-statistics-publications/cardiovascular-disease-statistics-2026", "type": "webpage", "title": "Cardiovascular disease statistics compendium", "summary": "The full UK datasets behind the factsheets, in a revised edition published August 2026. This is where a researcher, journalist or funding bid should go. It is downloads rather than a readable page, which is why this experience links it instead of paraphrasing numbers out of it.", "duration": "20 minutes", "integrity": "dependent", "publisher": "www.bhf.org.uk"}, {"url": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/our-research/our-top-professors", "type": "webpage", "title": "The professors the charity funds", "summary": "Twenty-three named professors with their institutions and fields, which is the most concrete answer available to what does a research charity actually buy. Oxford, Cambridge, Edinburgh, Imperial, King's, Leicester, Bristol, Leeds, Manchester and Queen Mary are all represented. Research Professorships have been awarded since 2025; the Personal Chairs were awarded up to 2024. Browse it before forming any view about overheads.", "duration": "15 minutes", "integrity": "standalone", "publisher": "www.bhf.org.uk"}, {"url": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/our-research/our-top-professors/professor-charalambos-antoniades", "type": "webpage", "title": "Professor Charalambos Antoniades, Oxford", "summary": "The charity's Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine at Oxford's Radcliffe Department of Medicine, studying how fat around the arteries signals to the heart and blood vessels in ways that lead to heart attacks and strokes — combining scan types to identify the plaques most likely to rupture, and using AI across genetic, molecular and imaging data from thousands of people. A fair example of the profile pages: detailed on the science, and carrying no quotation from the man himself.", "duration": "10 minutes", "integrity": "dependent", "publisher": "www.bhf.org.uk"}, {"url": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/our-research/our-top-professors/professor-john-danesh", "type": "webpage", "title": "Professor John Danesh, Cambridge", "summary": "Professor of medicine and epidemiology at Cambridge, working on how heart and circulatory diseases develop in multi-ethnic groups, with particular attention to people of South Asian background, who face higher risk. Read it immediately before or after Sohel's account later in this experience: the charity's own page credits this team's work in the same breath as his story, which is as direct a link between a donor's money and a patient's question as this experience contains.", "duration": "10 minutes", "integrity": "standalone", "publisher": "www.bhf.org.uk"}, {"url": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/our-research/our-top-professors/professor-hugh-watkins", "type": "webpage", "title": "Professor Hugh Watkins, Oxford", "summary": "The professor who leads CureHeart, the charity's largest ever grant. His profile here is the institutional version; his own words are in the World Heart Day article in the chapter on people, where he is interviewed alongside a twenty-year-old survivor of the condition he studies.", "duration": "10 minutes", "integrity": "dependent", "publisher": "www.bhf.org.uk"}, {"url": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/for-professionals/information-for-researchers", "type": "webpage", "title": "Information for researchers", "summary": "The application side, written for scientists: what the charity funds, how to apply, how awards are decided, and when committees sit — most four times a year, the Clinical Studies and Translational Awards committees twice. The most useful page here for anyone assessing the charity as a funder rather than as a cause.", "duration": "15 minutes", "integrity": "dependent", "publisher": "www.bhf.org.uk"}, {"url": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/our-research/cureheart", "type": "webpage", "title": "CureHeart", "summary": "The charity's biggest ever research grant: £30 million awarded in 2022 to Hugh Watkins at Oxford and Christine Seidman at Harvard, leading an international team on gene therapies to edit or silence the faulty genes behind inherited heart muscle diseases. Read the tense carefully — this aims to deliver a cure and is moving towards patient testing. Nobody has been cured yet and the charity does not claim otherwise.", "duration": "15 minutes", "integrity": "standalone", "publisher": "www.bhf.org.uk"}, {"url": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/our-research/cardiovascular-grand-challenges", "type": "webpage", "title": "Cardiovascular Grand Challenges", "summary": "A planned series of challenges over five years aimed at the field's biggest unsolved problems. Included as the structural counterpart to CureHeart: a funder large enough to make concentrated bets as well as spread small grants, which is a different kind of organisation from one that only does the latter.", "duration": "12 minutes", "integrity": "subsidiary", "publisher": "www.bhf.org.uk"}, {"url": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/news-from-the-bhf/news-archive/2024/december/transformational-new-gene-therapy-research-centre-launched", "type": "webpage", "title": "A gene therapy research centre", "summary": "Announced December 2024 with the Medical Research Council. Worth noting for the co-funding pattern it illustrates: the charity more often funds alongside another body than alone, which is also why attributing any result solely to it would be wrong.", "duration": "10 minutes", "integrity": "subsidiary", "publisher": "www.bhf.org.uk"}, {"url": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/our-research", "type": "webpage", "title": "Our research", "summary": "The research portfolio as presented to the public, and the page where the charity describes itself as the biggest independent funder of heart and circulatory research in the UK, funding around £100 million of projects a year. The hub to orient from before the trials and impact chapter.", "duration": "15 minutes", "integrity": "dependent", "publisher": "www.bhf.org.uk"}, {"url": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/our-research/impact-of-clinical-trials", "type": "webpage", "title": "The impact of clinical trials", "summary": "The charity's account of how its funded trials reach patients. Read it as the bridge between a grant and a treatment, and read it alongside the attribution note in this chapter's introduction: trials have many funders, and a contribution is not sole credit.", "duration": "12 minutes", "integrity": "dependent", "publisher": "www.bhf.org.uk"}, {"url": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/our-research/research-successes", "type": "webpage", "title": "Research successes", "summary": "The achievements page, and the one to read most carefully. It speaks of clot-busting drugs, transplants and small devices to correct heartbeats, and names Professor Antoniades's work and CureHeart. Its language is hedged throughout — our research has helped, helped transform, is helping develop — and some entries are goals rather than results. The hedging is appropriate. What it does not carry is an explicit attribution caveat, so this experience supplies one rather than quoting the page as though it had.", "duration": "15 minutes", "integrity": "standalone", "publisher": "www.bhf.org.uk"}, {"url": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/news-from-the-bhf/news-archive/2024/march/bhf-partners-with-panacea-innovation-to-launch-cardiostars", "type": "webpage", "title": "CardioStars", "summary": "A partnership launched in March 2024 with Panacea Innovation to help translate cardiovascular research towards products and companies. Included with a proportionate framing: this is a young, comparatively small commercialisation effort rather than a mature drug-development arm, and it should be assessed as the former.", "duration": "10 minutes", "integrity": "dependent", "publisher": "www.bhf.org.uk"}, {"url": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/for-professionals/information-for-researchers/our-research-strategy", "type": "webpage", "title": "The research strategy", "summary": "How the charity decides what to fund and why, which is the question a serious partner or major donor actually wants answered. Drier than the public pages and considerably more informative about where £100 million a year goes.", "duration": "15 minutes", "integrity": "dependent", "publisher": "www.bhf.org.uk"}, {"url": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/news-from-the-bhf/news-archive/2026/september/cardiac-arrest-survivor-meets-cureheart-scientist-world-heart-day", "type": "webpage", "title": "A survivor meets the scientist", "summary": "Published 29 September 2026. Jack Taylor, 20, from Nottingham, collapsed playing basketball at 17 in February 2024 with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy linked to the MYBPC3 gene; he now studies software engineering at Nottingham Trent. He meets Professor Hugh Watkins, who with Professor Christine Seidman of Harvard leads CureHeart. Jack: “Hearing about this research has made me not only grateful but also hopeful. Hopefully one day I’ll be cured of this, but more importantly, the next generation.” Watkins: “It’s really special meeting Jack.” And on a cure: “By the time Jack has kids, say they inherit the gene change, I really hope by that time we’ll have found a cure.” The funder, the scientist and the patient, in one article, all named and all quoted.", "duration": "15 minutes", "integrity": "standalone", "publisher": "www.bhf.org.uk"}, {"url": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/how-you-can-help/support-our-campaigns/heart-month/sohels-story", "type": "webpage", "title": "Sohel's story", "summary": "Sohel had a cardiac arrest at his gym at 47, triggered by a heart attack, while doing his usual Monday circuit training. His instructor Mike performed CPR until paramedics arrived with a defibrillator. He had a triple bypass, has since reviewed his risk factors, and completed a 5k trail challenge with his son Solly to raise money for the charity. He says that within the South Asian community he does not think many people know about heart attacks, and that he believes we need more funding for this research. The charity's page sets his account beside Professor John Danesh's work on cardiovascular risk in multi-ethnic groups — the clearest link in this experience between a question a patient asks and research a donor funded.", "duration": "12 minutes", "integrity": "standalone", "publisher": "www.bhf.org.uk"}, {"url": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/keep-us-beating/deans-story", "type": "webpage", "title": "Dean's story", "summary": "A strength and conditioning coach from Harrogate and a father of two, Dean had a heart attack in November 2024 at 53 and mistook it for heartburn. He felt unwell for several days and on about the fourth was too ill to train a client; he rang NHS 111, the operator recognised his symptoms immediately, and an angiogram at Leeds General Infirmary cleared a blocked artery. A consultant told his family he had come very close to dying. His own line is the entire argument for the second chapter of this experience: not recognising heart attack symptoms left me close to death. He credits scientific research generally rather than the charity specifically, and this experience does not upgrade that.", "duration": "12 minutes", "integrity": "standalone", "publisher": "www.bhf.org.uk"}, {"url": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/informationsupport/heart-matters-magazine/my-story/helen-and-maddy-story", "type": "webpage", "title": "Helen and Maddy's story", "summary": "Helen had a cardiac arrest at 53 while salsa dancing; the people around her performed CPR and used the defibrillator at the venue, and hospital tests found she had also had a heart attack with several blocked arteries. She spent more than two weeks in hospital while her daughter Maddy, then sitting A-levels, was alone at home. Helen had bypass surgery and cardiac rehabilitation including psychological help and art therapy. Helen: I was so lucky that the people around me worked together to save my life, and I am determined to live my life. Maddy: I've learned I'm strong and I can cope, and we understand each other better as a result of it all. The clearest illustration in this experience of why the CPR chapter matters, and of who else a cardiac arrest happens to.", "duration": "15 minutes", "integrity": "standalone", "publisher": "www.bhf.org.uk"}, {"url": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/how-you-can-help/volunteer/volunteer-stories/the-heart-lady-celebrates-40-years-with-bhf", "type": "webpage", "title": "Forty years of fundraising", "summary": "Shirley West of Guildford, known locally as Mrs Guildford and The Heart Lady, turns 79 this year and has volunteered for the charity for 40 years, chairing the Guildford fundraising group. She got involved after helping her friend Maureen Lemin organise a raffle, runs bucket collections, quiz nights and an open garden, and has been presented with the British Empire Medal. Her stated approach: put the fun into fundraising. Included because the £62.1m fundraising line in the accounts is, in practice, several thousand people doing some version of this.", "duration": "10 minutes", "integrity": "standalone", "publisher": "www.bhf.org.uk"}, {"url": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/how-you-can-help/volunteer/volunteer-stories/amy-lowe-volunteering-opened-a-massive-door-in-my-life", "type": "webpage", "title": "From volunteering to a job", "summary": "Amy Lowe began volunteering at the charity's Manchester Piccadilly shop to build her confidence and improve her mental health, found she loved the variety of the work, and later moved into a paid role. Included because it documents something charity retail does that rarely gets counted: the shops are a route back into work for people who need one, and that is a second kind of output alongside the money.", "duration": "10 minutes", "integrity": "dependent", "publisher": "www.bhf.org.uk"}, {"url": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/how-you-can-help/volunteer/volunteer-stories", "type": "webpage", "title": "Volunteer stories", "summary": "The index the previous two accounts come from, and worth browsing rather than reading. It is the thing this charity publishes that many do not: named volunteers saying in their own words why they turn up. Among them Kel Hughes, who volunteered in the Teddington shop, enjoyed the atmosphere, applied for a Sales Assistant role at Staines after eight months and got it.", "duration": "15 minutes", "integrity": "dependent", "publisher": "www.bhf.org.uk"}, {"url": "https://revivr.bhf.org.uk/", "type": "interactive", "title": "RevivR: learn CPR in 15 minutes", "summary": "The free interactive course, and the single most consequential link in this experience. About fifteen minutes on a phone or tablet, practising chest compressions on a cushion, with feedback and a mock 999 call, ending in a certificate. Built for adult CPR. The charity's figures for why: over 40,000 out-of-hospital cardiac arrests a year in the UK, fewer than one in ten survive, and prompt CPR with a defibrillator can more than double the chance of survival. Do this one rather than bookmarking it.", "duration": "15 minutes", "integrity": "standalone", "publisher": "revivr.bhf.org.uk"}, {"url": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/how-you-can-help/how-to-save-a-life/how-to-do-cpr/learn-cpr-in-15-minutes/train-your-organisation-in-cpr", "type": "interactive", "title": "Train your organisation in CPR", "summary": "The version for workplaces, clubs and community groups, so a whole team learns at once. The honest reason to use it: individual good intentions decay, and a workplace that has trained everybody has changed the odds in that building permanently.", "duration": "12 minutes", "integrity": "dependent", "publisher": "www.bhf.org.uk"}, {"url": "https://www.defibfinder.uk/", "type": "map", "title": "DefibFinder: find your nearest defibrillator", "summary": "The public face of The Circuit: a searchable map of registered defibrillators. Two minutes well spent now rather than in an emergency — look up your street, your workplace and wherever you exercise, and notice whether there is anything near you at all.", "duration": "6 minutes", "integrity": "standalone", "publisher": "www.defibfinder.uk"}, {"url": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/our-research/research-funding-across-the-uk-visualisations", "type": "interactive", "title": "Research funding across the UK", "summary": "Interactive maps of where the charity's research and clinical trials are funded, which answers a question donors genuinely ask and charities rarely answer well: is any of this happening near me. Worth a browse in the spending chapter because it makes £103m geographically real.", "duration": "12 minutes", "integrity": "subsidiary", "publisher": "www.bhf.org.uk"}, {"url": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/research-projects", "type": "interactive", "title": "Search funded research projects", "summary": "The directory of individual funded projects, searchable. The most direct available answer to what did the money actually buy, and the right tool for anyone who wants to check a claim rather than accept one.", "duration": "15 minutes", "integrity": "dependent", "publisher": "www.bhf.org.uk"}, {"url": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/find-bhf-near-you", "type": "map", "title": "Find a shop near you", "summary": "The charity's location finder, covering clothing shops, books and music shops, furniture and electrical stores, pop-ups and CPR training locations. Use it before a trip: furniture and electricals are only taken at some sites, which saves a wasted journey with a full car.", "duration": "6 minutes", "integrity": "dependent", "publisher": "www.bhf.org.uk"}, {"url": "https://myvolunteer.bhf.org.uk/event/list", "type": "interactive", "title": "Search volunteering opportunities", "summary": "The charity's own volunteer portal, searchable by role and event type. Scroll it for two minutes and the scale of unpaid work behind a national charity becomes concrete in a way no annual report conveys.", "duration": "8 minutes", "integrity": "dependent", "publisher": "myvolunteer.bhf.org.uk"}, {"url": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/how-you-can-help/donate/your-donation", "type": "interactive", "title": "The donation form", "summary": "The charity's official donation page, handling one-off and regular gifts by card, Apple Pay, Google Pay, PayPal or Direct Debit. This is the real page, checked rather than reconstructed. If you take one action from this experience the charity would want it to be this; if you would rather it were the fifteen-minute CPR course, that is a defensible choice and arguably the better one.", "duration": "5 minutes", "integrity": "standalone", "publisher": "www.bhf.org.uk"}, {"url": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/-/media/files/for-professionals/research/heart-statistics/bhf-cvd-statistics-uk-factsheet-jul26.pdf", "type": "pdf", "title": "UK cardiovascular disease factsheet", "summary": "The twice-yearly factsheet of key UK cardiovascular and risk-factor statistics, in the July 2026 edition. This is the document to cite, with its date, rather than any figure repeated second-hand. Deliberately linked rather than summarised here: a statistic lifted out of a dated factsheet and quoted undated is how misinformation starts.", "duration": "25 minutes", "integrity": "standalone", "publisher": "www.bhf.org.uk"}, {"url": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/-/media/files/british_heart_foundation_annual_report.pdf?rev=f5a0f7e6cbc84cbb8b597f14953a397c", "type": "pdf", "title": "Annual report and accounts", "summary": "The full audited report as published. Every financial figure in this experience traces here — income, spend, reserves, governance, the auditor's opinion, and the detail of the retail operation that the summary pages compress into one line. Long, and the most checkable item here.", "duration": "1 hour", "integrity": "standalone", "publisher": "www.bhf.org.uk"}, {"url": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/-/media/files/for-professionals/research/bhf_60-years-of-pioneering-research-and-innovation-(1).pdf", "type": "pdf", "title": "Sixty years of research and innovation", "summary": "The charity's own retrospective of its first sixty years of funding, as a single document. Read it for the shape of the thing rather than the claims: cardiovascular medicine improved enormously over that period through many funders at once, and a sixty-year summary from one of them is a useful account rather than a complete one.", "duration": "30 minutes", "integrity": "subsidiary", "publisher": "www.bhf.org.uk"}, {"url": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/our-research/research-successes/our-research-impact-reports", "type": "pdf", "title": "Research impact reports", "summary": "The charity's own impact reporting, which is the appropriate place to end a chapter about attribution. Read it as the organisation's self-assessment, clearly labelled as such — which is exactly how it is published, and more than many charities offer.", "duration": "25 minutes", "integrity": "subsidiary", "publisher": "www.bhf.org.uk"}, {"url": "https://www.youtube.com/@BritishHeartFoundation", "type": "video", "title": "The BHF's own video channel", "summary": "The charity's YouTube channel, included because some of what the BHF does best is short explanatory video. Cited as a channel rather than a search, and useful for seeing the register the charity uses with the public, which is noticeably plainer than its research or corporate material. Everything in this channel is the charity speaking about itself, so treat it as primary material rather than as independent assessment.", "duration": "20 minutes", "integrity": "standalone", "publisher": "www.youtube.com"}, {"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkohnIY93HY", "type": "video", "title": "Heart attack vs cardiac arrest: what's the difference?", "summary": "The single most useful addition to this experience. The distinction between a heart attack and a cardiac arrest is the thing this chapter exists to establish, it is the thing the public most reliably gets wrong, and it determines what a bystander should actually do. The BHF has made a short video explaining it, which is a better first encounter with the distinction than any amount of prose. Watch this before reading the rest of the chapter. Official BHF video, identifier verified, title as published.", "duration": "4 minutes", "integrity": "standalone", "publisher": "www.youtube.com"}, {"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppP6rGIfWf0", "type": "video", "title": "Heart attack symptoms to look out for", "summary": "The companion video on symptoms, and worth watching alongside the written guidance rather than instead of it. Video is better than text for one specific thing here: it conveys that symptoms are often less dramatic than the clutching-the-chest image people carry, which is the misconception that costs time. Pair with the NHS pages elsewhere in this chapter, and note that nothing in this experience is a substitute for calling 999 if you are worried now. Official BHF video, verified identifier.", "duration": "4 minutes", "integrity": "dependent", "publisher": "www.youtube.com"}, {"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oi_Qf47z5Pw", "type": "video", "title": "Your top heart palpitations questions", "summary": "Included because palpitations are among the most common reasons people worry about their heart, and among the least well served by general symptom material — most of which is about heart attacks. The video takes the questions the charity is actually asked. Included as an example of a charity answering the public's real questions rather than the questions a clinician would prioritise, which is a genuine function of a patient organisation. Official BHF video, verified identifier.", "duration": "8 minutes", "integrity": "subsidiary", "publisher": "www.youtube.com"}, {"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3_h9gtDsqc", "type": "video", "title": "Statins, explained by the charity", "summary": "Statins are the most prescribed and most argued-about cardiovascular medication in Britain, and a patient organisation's explanation of them is a useful third register alongside clinical guidance and press coverage. Watch it alongside the independent reference material in this chapter, and take any question about side effects or stopping a statin to your GP or pharmacist rather than to a forum. Official BHF video, verified identifier. Not medical advice; prescribing decisions belong with your GP.", "duration": "6 minutes", "integrity": "standalone", "publisher": "www.youtube.com"}, {"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvpkaxzvyiI", "type": "video", "title": "What does menopause mean for your heart health?", "summary": "Added deliberately because it covers a risk factor that general cardiovascular material has historically handled badly. Cardiovascular disease has long been culturally coded as a male problem, with the consequence that women's risk is under-recognised by patients and sometimes by clinicians, and the menopausal transition is a specific point at which risk changes. A charity making a video about it is addressing a real gap. Official BHF video, verified identifier.", "duration": "8 minutes", "integrity": "dependent", "publisher": "www.youtube.com"}, {"url": "https://www.youtube.com/user/ResusCouncilUK", "type": "video", "title": "Resuscitation Council UK's channel", "summary": "An independent counterweight on the subject where independence matters most. The Resuscitation Council UK is the body that sets the resuscitation guidelines used across the NHS, and it is not the BHF — so where the two agree on CPR technique, that agreement is worth more than either saying it alone. Cited as a channel, taken from the Council's own website rather than guessed. Use it alongside the BHF's own CPR material rather than instead of it.", "duration": "20 minutes", "integrity": "standalone", "publisher": "www.youtube.com"}, {"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJ_pvMkhEXE", "type": "video", "title": "Heart valve replacement: tissue heart valve", "summary": "A procedure explainer, included in the research and impact chapter because it shows what the research pipeline eventually produces: a routine intervention that a patient will be offered and will have to decide about. Research chapters tend to stop at the discovery; a patient encounters it as a conversation about a valve. The video is the point where those two meet. Official BHF video, verified identifier.", "duration": "6 minutes", "integrity": "subsidiary", "publisher": "www.youtube.com"}, {"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYJL8o8fBFE", "type": "video", "title": "The London to Brighton off-road bike ride", "summary": "One of the charity's named mass-participation events, shown rather than described. Worth a minute for anyone evaluating the charity as a partner or considering taking part: the events chapter lists what exists, and the video shows what the day actually looks like, which is the thing that determines whether people sign up. Official BHF video, verified identifier.", "duration": "4 minutes", "integrity": "dependent", "publisher": "www.youtube.com"}, {"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iU3LyckqZkI", "type": "video", "title": "A corporate partnership, in practice", "summary": "A video of a corporate fundraising activity with a named commercial partner, included because corporate partnership is abstract until you see what one actually consists of. For anyone assessing the charity as a partner, this is more informative than a partnerships page: it shows the format, the tone and the level of brand presence the charity is comfortable with. Official BHF video, verified identifier.", "duration": "5 minutes", "integrity": "subsidiary", "publisher": "www.youtube.com"}, {"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TiM4e43a6KY", "type": "video", "title": "A branch honoured for its contribution", "summary": "The charity's 2026 outstanding contribution award for its Carterton branch, included in the shops and local fundraising chapter because branch volunteers are the mechanism this part of the charity actually runs on. The award videos are short and specific, and they name real people and real places — which is a more honest picture of a national charity's local operation than any corporate summary of it. Official BHF video, verified identifier.", "duration": "4 minutes", "integrity": "dependent", "publisher": "www.youtube.com"}, {"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7_ffTixemk", "type": "video", "title": "Volunteer of the Year Awards 2026", "summary": "The charity's own volunteer awards, and the entry point to the four named-volunteer videos that follow. Included because the most persuasive thing about volunteering for an organisation is usually the people already doing it. Official BHF video, verified identifier, title as published.", "duration": "6 minutes", "integrity": "standalone", "publisher": "www.youtube.com"}, {"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGbm15BDcnQ", "type": "video", "title": "Valerie McIlveen, Northern Ireland", "summary": "A named volunteer honoured in the charity's 2026 outstanding contribution awards for Northern Ireland. Included with her name because the charity published it with her name and because the alternative — describing an anonymous volunteer — would be weaker and less respectful. Short, specific, and a better answer to what does volunteering here involve than any role description. Official BHF video, verified identifier.", "duration": "3 minutes", "integrity": "dependent", "publisher": "www.youtube.com"}, {"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyZv-0rug9A", "type": "video", "title": "Bill and Margaret Black, Scotland", "summary": "The Scottish outstanding contribution award for 2026, given to a couple. Worth noticing as a pattern across these four videos: long-service charity volunteering is frequently done by couples and by families rather than by individuals, which is a real feature of how this kind of organisation sustains itself and is invisible in any statistic about volunteer numbers. Official BHF video, verified identifier.", "duration": "3 minutes", "integrity": "dependent", "publisher": "www.youtube.com"}, {"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCCQ1HlsQX8", "type": "video", "title": "The Mariani Family, Cymru Wales", "summary": "The Welsh award for 2026, given to a family — which completes the four-nation set alongside England, Northern Ireland and Scotland and makes a small structural point about the charity: it awards separately across the four nations, which is a choice about how a UK-wide organisation recognises local effort. Official BHF video, verified identifier.", "duration": "3 minutes", "integrity": "subsidiary", "publisher": "www.youtube.com"}, {"url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Heart_Foundation", "type": "webpage", "title": "The British Heart Foundation, described independently", "summary": "The encyclopaedia article on the charity, included because most other accounts of the BHF here are written by the BHF. An independently maintained description gives you the founding date, the structure, the scale and the criticisms in one place, with citations you can follow. Where it differs in emphasis from the charity's own self-description, that difference is informative rather than an error in either.", "duration": "12 minutes", "integrity": "standalone", "publisher": "en.wikipedia.org"}, {"url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardiac_arrest", "type": "webpage", "title": "Cardiac arrest, as a clinical entity", "summary": "The independent reference on cardiac arrest — what it is, what causes it, what the survival rates actually are and how they vary by whether the arrest was witnessed and whether bystander CPR was given. Read it after the BHF video in this chapter: the video establishes the distinction clearly and quickly, and this establishes the numbers behind why the distinction matters so much.", "duration": "20 minutes", "integrity": "standalone", "publisher": "en.wikipedia.org"}, {"url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myocardial_infarction", "type": "webpage", "title": "Myocardial infarction, as a clinical entity", "summary": "The other half of the distinction, independently described: a heart attack is a blockage of blood supply to heart muscle, and the person is usually conscious. Having both articles alongside the charity's own material is the cleanest way to be certain you have the distinction right, because the two conditions require completely different responses from a bystander and the words are used interchangeably in ordinary speech.", "duration": "20 minutes", "integrity": "dependent", "publisher": "en.wikipedia.org"}, {"url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statin", "type": "webpage", "title": "Statins, independently described", "summary": "The independent article on the drug class, added as a counterweight to both the charity's explainer and the louder public argument about statins. It covers the evidence base, the debate about side effects and the disagreements about prescribing thresholds — which is a more complete picture than either a patient organisation or a newspaper column tends to give. Nothing here is prescribing advice.", "duration": "18 minutes", "integrity": "dependent", "publisher": "en.wikipedia.org"}, {"url": "https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/conditions-and-diseases/cardiovascular-conditions", "type": "webpage", "title": "NICE guidance on cardiovascular conditions", "summary": "The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence is the body whose guidance actually determines what the NHS offers, which makes it a different and in some ways more consequential source than either a charity or an encyclopaedia. If you want to know what treatment you should expect to be offered for a given cardiovascular condition in England, this is the authoritative answer, and it is free. Independent of the BHF.", "duration": "20 minutes", "integrity": "standalone", "publisher": "www.nice.org.uk"}, {"url": "https://ourworldindata.org/cardiovascular-diseases", "type": "interactive", "title": "Cardiovascular disease, in global data", "summary": "Added to give the scale chapter a source that is neither the charity nor a national statistics office. Our World in Data presents cardiovascular mortality and risk-factor data by country and over time, with the underlying datasets downloadable and the sources cited. The useful thing it provides that a UK charity cannot is proportion: it lets you see where Britain sits internationally, and that cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death globally rather than a national peculiarity.", "duration": "20 minutes", "integrity": "standalone", "publisher": "ourworldindata.org"}, {"url": "https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths", "type": "interactive", "title": "ONS mortality statistics", "summary": "The official UK source for deaths by cause, added so that any mortality figure quoted by any charity in this field can be checked against the national statistical authority that produces the underlying numbers. A charity's framing of a statistic is a choice; the statistic itself is here. Independent of the BHF and the appropriate place to verify a claim before repeating it.", "duration": "15 minutes", "integrity": "dependent", "publisher": "www.ons.gov.uk"}, {"url": "https://www.resus.org.uk/public-resource/how-do-cpr", "type": "webpage", "title": "Resuscitation Council UK: how to do CPR", "summary": "The independent authority's own public guidance on CPR, and the most important addition to this chapter. The Resuscitation Council UK sets the resuscitation guidelines used across the NHS. Where its technique guidance and the BHF's agree, you can be confident the advice is settled rather than one organisation's house style — and they do agree. Read both; this one is the source the clinical world defers to.", "duration": "12 minutes", "integrity": "standalone", "publisher": "www.resus.org.uk"}, {"url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardiopulmonary_resuscitation", "type": "webpage", "title": "CPR, independently described", "summary": "The encyclopaedia article, which adds something neither charity provides: the history of the technique, how the guidance has changed over time, and the evidence behind the current compression-focused approach. Knowing that the advice has changed — and why — is useful, because a reader who learned CPR twenty years ago was taught something materially different and may not know it.", "duration": "20 minutes", "integrity": "dependent", "publisher": "en.wikipedia.org"}, {"url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chain_of_survival", "type": "webpage", "title": "The chain of survival", "summary": "The concept that organises everything in this chapter and the next, and it is not a BHF concept — it is the standard resuscitation framework. Survival after a cardiac arrest depends on a sequence of links: early recognition and calling for help, early CPR, early defibrillation, and post-resuscitation care. The framework's value is that it shows why bystanders matter so much: the first two links are almost always performed by whoever happens to be there.", "duration": "10 minutes", "integrity": "standalone", "publisher": "en.wikipedia.org"}, {"url": "https://www.resus.org.uk/professional-library/2025-resuscitation-guidelines", "type": "webpage", "title": "The 2025 UK resuscitation guidelines", "summary": "The actual guidelines, for anyone who wants the primary document rather than a summary of it — clinicians, first-aid trainers, workplace responsible persons, or anyone who needs to know what the current standard of care formally is. Published by the Resuscitation Council UK and independent of any charity's campaigning. Technical, authoritative, and the thing all the public-facing material is derived from.", "duration": "30 minutes", "integrity": "dependent", "publisher": "www.resus.org.uk"}, {"url": "https://www.resus.org.uk/public-resource/defibrillation", "type": "webpage", "title": "Resuscitation Council UK on defibrillation", "summary": "The independent authority's public guidance on defibrillators, added alongside the charity's. The point worth taking from it, and it is the single most important thing in this chapter: a public access defibrillator is designed to be used by someone with no training, it will not deliver a shock unless it detects a rhythm that needs one, and it talks you through each step — the one rule is not to touch the person while it delivers a shock. Fear of doing harm is the main reason bystanders do not use them.", "duration": "12 minutes", "integrity": "standalone", "publisher": "www.resus.org.uk"}, {"url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automated_external_defibrillator", "type": "webpage", "title": "Automated external defibrillators, independently described", "summary": "The reference article on the devices themselves — how they work, how they decide whether to shock, their deployment history and the evidence on public access programmes. Read alongside the Council's guidance and the charity's map. Useful particularly for anyone responsible for deciding whether an organisation should install one, which is a question this experience's other sources approach from an advocacy position rather than a neutral one.", "duration": "15 minutes", "integrity": "dependent", "publisher": "en.wikipedia.org"}, {"url": "https://www.resus.org.uk/additional-guidance/guidance-defibrillators", "type": "webpage", "title": "Resuscitation Council UK guidance for defibrillator owners", "summary": "The practical document for organisations rather than bystanders: what is involved in owning, siting, registering and maintaining a defibrillator. It answers the question a school, church, gym or employer actually faces: who is responsible for the device once it is on the wall. Independent of the BHF.", "duration": "15 minutes", "integrity": "dependent", "publisher": "www.resus.org.uk"}, {"url": "https://www.cardiomyopathy.org/", "type": "webpage", "title": "Cardiomyopathy UK", "summary": "A second, independent cardiac charity, added to the funding chapter to make a structural point the BHF's own pages cannot: the BHF is the largest cardiovascular charity in Britain but it is not the only one, and smaller condition-specific organisations occupy space it does not. Anyone assessing where to give, or which organisation to approach about a specific condition, should know the landscape has more than one occupant.", "duration": "10 minutes", "integrity": "standalone", "publisher": "www.cardiomyopathy.org"}, {"url": "https://www.c-r-y.org.uk/", "type": "webpage", "title": "Cardiac Risk in the Young", "summary": "A third independent charity, and the one with the most genuinely different emphasis. CRY works specifically on young sudden cardiac death — awareness, screening, research and supporting bereaved families. Its existence and its priorities are the clearest available evidence that cardiovascular charity is not one undifferentiated cause, and its screening advocacy is covered further in the policy chapter, where it makes a case the BHF's material does not.", "duration": "12 minutes", "integrity": "standalone", "publisher": "www.c-r-y.org.uk"}, {"url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart_failure", "type": "webpage", "title": "Heart failure, independently described", "summary": "Added to the research chapter because heart failure is where a large share of cardiovascular research funding goes and because the term is widely misunderstood — it does not mean the heart has stopped, it means it is not pumping as well as it should, and it is a chronic condition people live with for years. An independent article is the right place to establish that, free of any charity's framing.", "duration": "20 minutes", "integrity": "standalone", "publisher": "en.wikipedia.org"}, {"url": "https://www.escardio.org/", "type": "webpage", "title": "The European Society of Cardiology", "summary": "The professional body for cardiology across Europe, which publishes the clinical guidelines most European cardiologists work to. Added as an independent professional-community source: it shows what the specialty itself prioritises, which is not always what a national patient charity prioritises, and the gap between the two is one of the more interesting things about this field.", "duration": "15 minutes", "integrity": "dependent", "publisher": "www.escardio.org"}, {"url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardiomyopathy", "type": "webpage", "title": "Cardiomyopathy, independently described", "summary": "The condition at the centre of the charity's largest research programme, described independently of the programme. Cardiomyopathy is a disease of the heart muscle itself, frequently genetic, and often the cause when an apparently healthy young person dies suddenly. Reading the independent article before the charity's account of its research makes the research easier to assess, because you can see what problem is actually being attacked.", "duration": "15 minutes", "integrity": "standalone", "publisher": "en.wikipedia.org"}, {"url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypertrophic_cardiomyopathy", "type": "webpage", "title": "Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy specifically", "summary": "The most common inherited heart condition and the specific form most associated with sudden death in young athletes. It is also the condition that connects the research chapter to the screening argument in the policy chapter and to the bereavement accounts in chapter sixteen, several of which concern young people who died without a prior diagnosis. Worth reading as the thread that runs through those three chapters.", "duration": "15 minutes", "integrity": "dependent", "publisher": "en.wikipedia.org"}, {"url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atrial_fibrillation", "type": "webpage", "title": "Atrial fibrillation, independently described", "summary": "The most common sustained heart rhythm disturbance, a major cause of stroke, and frequently symptomless — which is why it appears in a chapter about trials and impact. It is one of the clearest cases where detection rather than treatment is the bottleneck, and therefore one of the clearest tests of whether awareness and screening interventions actually change outcomes. Independent reference, no charity framing.", "duration": "18 minutes", "integrity": "standalone", "publisher": "en.wikipedia.org"}, {"url": "https://www.cardiomyopathy.org/about-cardiomyopathy/related-disorders/myocarditis", "type": "webpage", "title": "Myocarditis, from a condition-specific charity", "summary": "An independent charity's clinical information on myocarditis — inflammation of the heart muscle — included because it is a condition that received a great deal of public attention and a great deal of misinformation in recent years, and because a specialist patient organisation's page is a better source than general coverage. Illustrates the value of the condition-specific charities introduced earlier in this experience.", "duration": "12 minutes", "integrity": "dependent", "publisher": "www.cardiomyopathy.org"}, {"url": "https://www.c-r-y.org.uk/cry-responds-to-the-national-screening-committee-opening-consultation-on-screening-for-cardiac-conditions-associated-with-sudden-cardiac-death/", "type": "article", "title": "CRY on national screening policy", "summary": "A genuine policy disagreement in the sector, and the most useful thing in this chapter. Cardiac Risk in the Young argues for cardiac screening of young people and has responded formally to the UK National Screening Committee's consultation on screening for conditions associated with sudden cardiac death. Screening is genuinely contested on evidence grounds — false positives, cost, and the consequences of diagnosing conditions that may never cause harm — and a file that presented cardiovascular charity as having one agreed policy position would be misleading.", "duration": "12 minutes", "integrity": "standalone", "publisher": "www.c-r-y.org.uk"}, {"url": "https://www.c-r-y.org.uk/largest-ever-study-of-cardiac-screening-in-young-people-shows-heart-checks-save-lives/", "type": "article", "title": "The evidence CRY cites for screening", "summary": "The research CRY puts behind its position: its own account of what it describes as the largest study of cardiac screening in young people. Linked so the argument can be assessed rather than taken on either side's word, and labelled for what it is — a charity's presentation of research supporting that charity's campaign. Read it alongside the national screening committee's own framing before forming a view.", "duration": "12 minutes", "integrity": "dependent", "publisher": "www.c-r-y.org.uk"}, {"url": "https://www.c-r-y.org.uk/screening", "type": "webpage", "title": "CRY's screening programme in practice", "summary": "What the advocacy actually delivers: CRY runs subsidised cardiac screening events for young people. Included because it closes the loop between a policy position and a service, which is the test of whether a campaigning organisation is doing more than campaigning. If a close relative died suddenly and young, the first step is to ask your GP about referral to an NHS inherited cardiac conditions service; CRY's screening is an additional option, not a substitute.", "duration": "10 minutes", "integrity": "dependent", "publisher": "www.c-r-y.org.uk"}, {"url": "https://www.c-r-y.org.uk/my-story/", "type": "article", "title": "CRY's My Story archive — content note", "summary": "A content note first, because this material is heavier than anything else in this experience. Cardiac Risk in the Young hosts an archive of accounts of young sudden cardiac death, written and submitted by bereaved families and partners, organised by the writer's relationship to the person who died — mother, father, sibling, partner, grandparent, child, friend. CRY explicitly invites these submissions so that others may read them and feel less alone, which is what establishes consent. They are independent of the BHF, they are not recovery stories, and several concern deaths where no cause was ever found. Read them if that is useful to you and skip this chapter's remainder if it is not.", "duration": "15 minutes", "integrity": "standalone", "publisher": "www.c-r-y.org.uk"}, {"url": "https://www.c-r-y.org.uk/michelle-mcfeely-mystory/", "type": "article", "title": "Darren Crawford, on Michelle McFeely", "summary": "Darren Crawford's published account of the death of his girlfriend, Michelle McFeely, of Coleraine, aged 30, for which a post mortem found no cause. Linked rather than retold, because the words belong to him. Published by CRY under his name, and included because an account in which nothing is explained is truer to this subject than one that resolves.", "duration": "6 minutes", "integrity": "dependent", "publisher": "www.c-r-y.org.uk"}, {"url": "https://www.c-r-y.org.uk/craig-salmon-mystory/", "type": "article", "title": "Craig Salmon", "summary": "A further account from CRY's archive, linked under the name the charity publishes it with and deliberately left uncharacterised: one example of what the archive holds is enough, and summarising every entry would turn individual accounts into a catalogue. The archive index is there if you want to choose for yourself.", "duration": "8 minutes", "integrity": "dependent", "publisher": "www.c-r-y.org.uk"}, {"url": "https://www.c-r-y.org.uk/hannah-taylor-mystory/", "type": "article", "title": "Hannah Taylor", "summary": "A further account from CRY's archive, linked under the name the charity publishes it with and deliberately left uncharacterised for the same reason. Listed separately rather than bundled because a person's account is not a supporting detail of another person's account, and giving each its own entry is the correct way to treat them.", "duration": "8 minutes", "integrity": "subsidiary", "publisher": "www.c-r-y.org.uk"}, {"url": "http://www.myheart.org.uk", "type": "webpage", "title": "myheart — young people living with a diagnosis", "summary": "CRY's network for young people who have been diagnosed with a cardiac condition, as distinct from the bereavement archive. Included because the two halves of this subject are genuinely different: being diagnosed young with a heart condition you will live with for decades is not the same experience as surviving a cardiac event in later life, and almost nothing else here addresses it. Independent of the BHF.", "duration": "12 minutes", "integrity": "standalone", "publisher": "www.myheart.org.uk"}, {"url": "https://healthunlocked.com/bhf", "type": "social", "title": "The peer community: 71,245 members", "summary": "The most substantive source of other people's words in this experience, and a different kind of evidence entirely. The BHF's community on HealthUnlocked had 71,245 members and 41,341 posts as of 30 October 2026. What it contains is not curated case studies but people mid-problem, asking each other: returning to exercise after a cardiac arrest, whether gentle exercise classes are safe with a pacemaker, what a heart monitor shows with vasospastic angina, muscle pain after a statin dose increase, feeling shaky after too much coffee. That is the texture a charity's published stories cannot show, because published stories have endings.", "duration": "20 minutes", "integrity": "standalone", "publisher": "healthunlocked.com"}, {"url": "https://www.resus.org.uk/public-resource/support-after-cardiac-arrest", "type": "webpage", "title": "Support after a cardiac arrest", "summary": "The Resuscitation Council UK's resource for survivors and their families, included because what happens to someone after a cardiac arrest gets far less attention than the arrest itself. Surviving a cardiac arrest frequently involves cognitive and psychological consequences that nobody prepares people for. Independent of the BHF and the most useful thing here for anyone in that position.", "duration": "15 minutes", "integrity": "standalone", "publisher": "www.resus.org.uk"}, {"url": "https://www.resus.org.uk/publications/support-after-cardiac-arrest-discharge-resource", "type": "pdf", "title": "The discharge resource", "summary": "The companion document to the Council's support resource, written to be given to people leaving hospital after a cardiac arrest and to those caring for them. Linked because it is specific and practical rather than motivational, and because a reader who has arrived here after an event in their own family needs something of this kind more than they need a donation page. Published by the Resuscitation Council UK.", "duration": "20 minutes", "integrity": "dependent", "publisher": "www.resus.org.uk"}], "journeys": [{"name": "The Whole Picture", "steps": [{"order": 1, "title": "British Heart Foundation", "channel": "The Charity's Own Pages", "summary": "The charity's front door, and where three of the headline figures in this experience are stated in plain text rather than buried in a download: over 8 million people in the UK living with cardiovascular disease, one in four deaths, and someone dying from it every three minutes. Worth a minute first, because the charity's own account should come before anyone else's.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 2, "title": "What we do", "channel": "The Charity's Own Pages", "summary": "The charity's own summary of its four strands — research, information and support, CPR and defibrillators, and policy — with the figures it chooses to lead with: over £100m of research funded a year, £437m of research currently in progress, at least 70p in every £1 reaching lifesaving work, over 100,000 defibrillators on The Circuit, 200,000 people reached by its CPR training, and a shop count that predates the closures announced in June 2026. The registration numbers are here too, which is how you verify any claim made about them, including the ones in this experience.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 3, "title": "Our strategy", "channel": "The Charity's Own Pages", "summary": "The stated plan, which is the fairer way to judge an organisation than its achievements page: not what it has done but what it says it is trying to do next, and whether that is measurable. Read it, then read the annual report, and see whether the two agree.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/our-strategy", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 4, "title": "Heart statistics", "channel": "Research, Universities and Industry", "summary": "The charity's statistics hub, and the source to cite rather than any secondary summary. Be aware of its shape before using it: the headline numbers are in a twice-yearly factsheet and an annual compendium rather than on the page itself, so quoting from here means quoting from a dated document, which is the correct way to do it anyway.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/our-research/heart-statistics", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 5, "title": "The BHF's own video channel", "channel": "Watch It Explained", "summary": "The charity's YouTube channel, included because some of what the BHF does best is short explanatory video. Cited as a channel rather than a search, and useful for seeing the register the charity uses with the public, which is noticeably plainer than its research or corporate material. Everything in this channel is the charity speaking about itself, so treat it as primary material rather than as independent assessment.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/@BritishHeartFoundation", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "video"}, {"order": 6, "title": "The British Heart Foundation, described independently", "channel": "Independent Reference and Authority", "summary": "The encyclopaedia article on the charity, included because most other accounts of the BHF here are written by the BHF. An independently maintained description gives you the founding date, the structure, the scale and the criticisms in one place, with citations you can follow. Where it differs in emphasis from the charity's own self-description, that difference is informative rather than an error in either.", "sourceUrl": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Heart_Foundation", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 7, "title": "Heart attack", "channel": "The Charity's Own Pages", "summary": "The primary source for this chapter and the most important page in the experience. It lists the symptoms, instructs you to call 999, and adds that you should not worry about wasting anyone's time. It also states that symptoms differ between people, that you may not have all of them, and that although women and men generally experience the same symptoms, research shows women tend not to recognise them as a heart attack as quickly. Read the page itself; the context around each symptom is what makes it useful rather than frightening.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/informationsupport/conditions/heart-attack", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 8, "title": "Cardiac arrest", "channel": "The Charity's Own Pages", "summary": "The other condition, and the distinction this chapter exists for. A cardiac arrest is the heart suddenly stopping; a heart attack is a loss of blood flow to part of the heart muscle. The response differs: a cardiac arrest needs CPR and a defibrillator, immediately, from whoever is there. The NHS links to this very page from its own heart attack guidance, which is a fair indication of how authoritative it is considered.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/informationsupport/conditions/cardiac-arrest", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 9, "title": "Heart attack symptoms in women", "channel": "The Charity's Own Pages", "summary": "The charity's dedicated page. Its position is that women and men generally experience the same symptoms, but that research shows women tend not to recognise them as a heart attack as quickly — which is why the page exists.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/informationsupport/conditions/heart-attack/signs-and-symptoms-of-heart-attacks-in-women", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 10, "title": "NHS: Heart attack", "channel": "NHS Guidance", "summary": "The NHS's own guidance, included alongside the charity's so you can see two independent official sources agreeing. Its emergency box is headed Immediate action required: call 999 if, and it adds an instruction the charity's page does not: do not drive yourself to A and E. It also distinguishes cardiac arrest from heart attack and links to the charity's cardiac arrest page to explain it.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/heart-attack/", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 11, "title": "Conditions A to Z", "channel": "The Charity's Own Pages", "summary": "The full index, from coronary heart disease and heart failure to atrial fibrillation, stroke and spontaneous coronary artery dissection. The point of linking the index rather than a selection: there are many conditions under the heading of heart and circulatory disease, and a specific condition is almost always the real question.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/informationsupport/conditions", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 12, "title": "NHS: Coronary heart disease", "channel": "NHS Guidance", "summary": "The underlying disease behind most heart attacks, and the context that makes the symptom lists comprehensible rather than arbitrary. The NHS is the body that actually treats people in the UK, so on any question about your own care its guidance is the operative one.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/coronary-heart-disease/", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 13, "title": "Heart attack vs cardiac arrest: what's the difference?", "channel": "Watch It Explained", "summary": "The single most useful addition to this experience. The distinction between a heart attack and a cardiac arrest is the thing this chapter exists to establish, it is the thing the public most reliably gets wrong, and it determines what a bystander should actually do. The BHF has made a short video explaining it, which is a better first encounter with the distinction than any amount of prose. Watch this before reading the rest of the chapter. Official BHF video, identifier verified, title as published.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkohnIY93HY", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "video"}, {"order": 14, "title": "Heart attack symptoms to look out for", "channel": "Watch It Explained", "summary": "The companion video on symptoms, and worth watching alongside the written guidance rather than instead of it. Video is better than text for one specific thing here: it conveys that symptoms are often less dramatic than the clutching-the-chest image people carry, which is the misconception that costs time. Pair with the NHS pages elsewhere in this chapter, and note that nothing in this experience is a substitute for calling 999 if you are worried now. Official BHF video, verified identifier.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppP6rGIfWf0", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "video"}, {"order": 15, "title": "Your top heart palpitations questions", "channel": "Watch It Explained", "summary": "Included because palpitations are among the most common reasons people worry about their heart, and among the least well served by general symptom material — most of which is about heart attacks. The video takes the questions the charity is actually asked. Included as an example of a charity answering the public's real questions rather than the questions a clinician would prioritise, which is a genuine function of a patient organisation. Official BHF video, verified identifier.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oi_Qf47z5Pw", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "video"}, {"order": 16, "title": "Cardiac arrest, as a clinical entity", "channel": "Independent Reference and Authority", "summary": "The independent reference on cardiac arrest — what it is, what causes it, what the survival rates actually are and how they vary by whether the arrest was witnessed and whether bystander CPR was given. Read it after the BHF video in this chapter: the video establishes the distinction clearly and quickly, and this establishes the numbers behind why the distinction matters so much.", "sourceUrl": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardiac_arrest", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 17, "title": "Myocardial infarction, as a clinical entity", "channel": "Independent Reference and Authority", "summary": "The other half of the distinction, independently described: a heart attack is a blockage of blood supply to heart muscle, and the person is usually conscious. Having both articles alongside the charity's own material is the cleanest way to be certain you have the distinction right, because the two conditions require completely different responses from a bystander and the words are used interchangeably in ordinary speech.", "sourceUrl": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myocardial_infarction", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 18, "title": "Risk factors", "channel": "The Charity's Own Pages", "summary": "The charity's hub, naming high cholesterol, high blood pressure, diabetes, obesity, mental health, smoking, physical inactivity, alcohol, stress, air pollution and family history, with its framing that many of these diseases are caused by risk factors that can be controlled, treated or modified. Note that it calls stress an indirect factor rather than a direct one.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/informationsupport/risk-factors", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 19, "title": "High blood pressure", "channel": "The Charity's Own Pages", "summary": "The factor with the widest gap between how easy it is to measure and how often it goes unmeasured. The charity's line on it is blunt — knowing your blood pressure could save your life — and it supplies a home chart and diary for tracking readings. Of all the pages in this chapter, this is the one most likely to change something.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/informationsupport/risk-factors/high-blood-pressure", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 20, "title": "Family history", "channel": "The Charity's Own Pages", "summary": "Included deliberately, because it is the factor people assume is a verdict. The charity says these diseases can run in families. Family history itself cannot be changed, but it raises risk rather than deciding the outcome, and the other factors in this chapter can still be controlled or treated. If a close relative died suddenly and young, ask your GP about referral to an NHS inherited cardiac conditions service. Relevant background to Jack Taylor's account later in this experience.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/informationsupport/risk-factors/family-history", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 21, "title": "NHS: High blood pressure", "channel": "NHS Guidance", "summary": "The NHS view of the same risk factor, including when and how to get checked — which is the step the charity's own risk page does not spell out. Pair the two: the charity explains why it matters, the NHS tells you what to do about it.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/high-blood-pressure-hypertension/", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 22, "title": "NHS Health Check", "channel": "NHS Guidance", "summary": "A free check for adults in England aged 40 to 74, covering blood pressure, cholesterol and cardiovascular risk. This is the concrete answer to how do I find out my risk, and it is the link in this chapter most likely to be acted on. If you have had a letter about one and not booked it, this is your nudge.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.nhs.uk/tests-and-treatments/nhs-health-check/", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 23, "title": "Statins, explained by the charity", "channel": "Watch It Explained", "summary": "Statins are the most prescribed and most argued-about cardiovascular medication in Britain, and a patient organisation's explanation of them is a useful third register alongside clinical guidance and press coverage. Watch it alongside the independent reference material in this chapter, and take any question about side effects or stopping a statin to your GP or pharmacist rather than to a forum. Official BHF video, verified identifier. Not medical advice; prescribing decisions belong with your GP.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3_h9gtDsqc", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "video"}, {"order": 24, "title": "What does menopause mean for your heart health?", "channel": "Watch It Explained", "summary": "Added deliberately because it covers a risk factor that general cardiovascular material has historically handled badly. Cardiovascular disease has long been culturally coded as a male problem, with the consequence that women's risk is under-recognised by patients and sometimes by clinicians, and the menopausal transition is a specific point at which risk changes. A charity making a video about it is addressing a real gap. Official BHF video, verified identifier.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvpkaxzvyiI", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "video"}, {"order": 25, "title": "Statins, independently described", "channel": "Independent Reference and Authority", "summary": "The independent article on the drug class, added as a counterweight to both the charity's explainer and the louder public argument about statins. It covers the evidence base, the debate about side effects and the disagreements about prescribing thresholds — which is a more complete picture than either a patient organisation or a newspaper column tends to give. Nothing here is prescribing advice.", "sourceUrl": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statin", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 26, "title": "NICE guidance on cardiovascular conditions", "channel": "Independent Reference and Authority", "summary": "The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence is the body whose guidance actually determines what the NHS offers, which makes it a different and in some ways more consequential source than either a charity or an encyclopaedia. If you want to know what treatment you should expect to be offered for a given cardiovascular condition in England, this is the authoritative answer, and it is free. Independent of the BHF.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/conditions-and-diseases/cardiovascular-conditions", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 27, "title": "Cardiovascular disease statistics compendium", "channel": "Research, Universities and Industry", "summary": "The full UK datasets behind the factsheets, in a revised edition published August 2026. This is where a researcher, journalist or funding bid should go. It is downloads rather than a readable page, which is why this experience links it instead of paraphrasing numbers out of it.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/our-research/heart-statistics/heart-statistics-publications/cardiovascular-disease-statistics-2026", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 28, "title": "UK cardiovascular disease factsheet", "channel": "Documents and Data", "summary": "The twice-yearly factsheet of key UK cardiovascular and risk-factor statistics, in the July 2026 edition. This is the document to cite, with its date, rather than any figure repeated second-hand. Deliberately linked rather than summarised here: a statistic lifted out of a dated factsheet and quoted undated is how misinformation starts.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/-/media/files/for-professionals/research/heart-statistics/bhf-cvd-statistics-uk-factsheet-jul26.pdf", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "pdf"}, {"order": 29, "title": "NHS: Heart failure", "channel": "NHS Guidance", "summary": "Included in the statistics chapter rather than the symptoms one because of what the numbers conceal: heart and circulatory disease is not one condition, and aggregate mortality figures hide completely different illnesses with different trajectories. Heart failure is the clearest example of a condition people live with for years.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/heart-failure/", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 30, "title": "NHS: Stroke", "channel": "NHS Guidance", "summary": "Circulatory disease of the brain, included because it sits inside the charity's remit and outside most people's mental model of a heart charity. Stroke has its own time-critical recognition test and its own emergency pathway, both on this page.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/stroke/", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 31, "title": "Cardiovascular disease, in global data", "channel": "Independent Reference and Authority", "summary": "Added to give the scale chapter a source that is neither the charity nor a national statistics office. Our World in Data presents cardiovascular mortality and risk-factor data by country and over time, with the underlying datasets downloadable and the sources cited. The useful thing it provides that a UK charity cannot is proportion: it lets you see where Britain sits internationally, and that cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death globally rather than a national peculiarity.", "sourceUrl": "https://ourworldindata.org/cardiovascular-diseases", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "interactive"}, {"order": 32, "title": "ONS mortality statistics", "channel": "Independent Reference and Authority", "summary": "The official UK source for deaths by cause, added so that any mortality figure quoted by any charity in this field can be checked against the national statistical authority that produces the underlying numbers. A charity's framing of a statistic is a choice; the statistic itself is here. Independent of the BHF and the appropriate place to verify a claim before repeating it.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "interactive"}, {"order": 33, "title": "How to save a life", "channel": "The Charity's Own Pages", "summary": "The hub for the charity's CPR and defibrillator work: step-by-step CPR guidance, how to recognise a cardiac arrest, training for schools and organisations, the defibrillator pages and a funded defibrillator scheme for eligible community groups. Start here, then do the fifteen-minute course. This chapter is the reason to send someone this experience who has no interest whatsoever in charities.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/how-you-can-help/how-to-save-a-life", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 34, "title": "How to do CPR", "channel": "The Charity's Own Pages", "summary": "The written instructions, for reading before you need them and for the uncomfortable fact that most people have seen CPR performed only on television. Covers adult CPR and points to the separate guidance for children and babies, which differs and matters.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/how-you-can-help/how-to-save-a-life/how-to-do-cpr", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 35, "title": "RevivR: learn CPR in 15 minutes", "channel": "Learn It and Do It", "summary": "The free interactive course, and the single most consequential link in this experience. About fifteen minutes on a phone or tablet, practising chest compressions on a cushion, with feedback and a mock 999 call, ending in a certificate. Built for adult CPR. The charity's figures for why: over 40,000 out-of-hospital cardiac arrests a year in the UK, fewer than one in ten survive, and prompt CPR with a defibrillator can more than double the chance of survival. Do this one rather than bookmarking it.", "sourceUrl": "https://revivr.bhf.org.uk/", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "interactive"}, {"order": 36, "title": "CPR training in schools", "channel": "The Charity's Own Pages", "summary": "The charity's schools programme, which is the quiet long game: teaching a cohort of teenagers CPR produces a population that can respond decades later. Relevant to Sohel's account, where it was a gym instructor who knew what to do, and to Helen's, where it was fellow dancers.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/how-you-can-help/how-to-save-a-life/cpr-training-in-schools", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 37, "title": "Train your organisation in CPR", "channel": "Learn It and Do It", "summary": "The version for workplaces, clubs and community groups, so a whole team learns at once. The honest reason to use it: individual good intentions decay, and a workplace that has trained everybody has changed the odds in that building permanently.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/how-you-can-help/how-to-save-a-life/how-to-do-cpr/learn-cpr-in-15-minutes/train-your-organisation-in-cpr", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "interactive"}, {"order": 38, "title": "Resuscitation Council UK's channel", "channel": "Watch It Explained", "summary": "An independent counterweight on the subject where independence matters most. The Resuscitation Council UK is the body that sets the resuscitation guidelines used across the NHS, and it is not the BHF — so where the two agree on CPR technique, that agreement is worth more than either saying it alone. Cited as a channel, taken from the Council's own website rather than guessed. Use it alongside the BHF's own CPR material rather than instead of it.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/user/ResusCouncilUK", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "video"}, {"order": 39, "title": "Resuscitation Council UK: how to do CPR", "channel": "Independent Reference and Authority", "summary": "The independent authority's own public guidance on CPR, and the most important addition to this chapter. The Resuscitation Council UK sets the resuscitation guidelines used across the NHS. Where its technique guidance and the BHF's agree, you can be confident the advice is settled rather than one organisation's house style — and they do agree. Read both; this one is the source the clinical world defers to.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.resus.org.uk/public-resource/how-do-cpr", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 40, "title": "CPR, independently described", "channel": "Independent Reference and Authority", "summary": "The encyclopaedia article, which adds something neither charity provides: the history of the technique, how the guidance has changed over time, and the evidence behind the current compression-focused approach. Knowing that the advice has changed — and why — is useful, because a reader who learned CPR twenty years ago was taught something materially different and may not know it.", "sourceUrl": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardiopulmonary_resuscitation", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 41, "title": "The chain of survival", "channel": "Independent Reference and Authority", "summary": "The concept that organises everything in this chapter and the next, and it is not a BHF concept — it is the standard resuscitation framework. Survival after a cardiac arrest depends on a sequence of links: early recognition and calling for help, early CPR, early defibrillation, and post-resuscitation care. The framework's value is that it shows why bystanders matter so much: the first two links are almost always performed by whoever happens to be there.", "sourceUrl": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chain_of_survival", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 42, "title": "The 2025 UK resuscitation guidelines", "channel": "Independent Reference and Authority", "summary": "The actual guidelines, for anyone who wants the primary document rather than a summary of it — clinicians, first-aid trainers, workplace responsible persons, or anyone who needs to know what the current standard of care formally is. Published by the Resuscitation Council UK and independent of any charity's campaigning. Technical, authoritative, and the thing all the public-facing material is derived from.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.resus.org.uk/professional-library/2025-resuscitation-guidelines", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 43, "title": "Defibrillators", "channel": "The Charity's Own Pages", "summary": "What they are, what they do, how to use one, and the thing most people need told: a defibrillator will not let you shock someone who does not need it, and you cannot make things worse by fetching one. Read this alongside the CPR pages; in a cardiac arrest the two are a single action, not alternatives.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/how-you-can-help/how-to-save-a-life/defibrillators", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 44, "title": "The Circuit: the national defibrillator network", "channel": "The Charity's Own Pages", "summary": "The map ambulance services consult in a cardiac arrest call. Over 100,000 devices registered, and tens of thousands the charity believes are not. The figure that makes the case: every minute without CPR and defibrillation reduces survival by up to ten per cent, so a device that is present but unmapped may as well be absent. Registration is free and also brings maintenance reminders for whoever looks after it.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/how-you-can-help/how-to-save-a-life/defibrillators/national-defibrillator-network-the-circuit", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 45, "title": "DefibFinder: find your nearest defibrillator", "channel": "Learn It and Do It", "summary": "The public face of The Circuit: a searchable map of registered defibrillators. Two minutes well spent now rather than in an emergency — look up your street, your workplace and wherever you exercise, and notice whether there is anything near you at all.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.defibfinder.uk/", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "map"}, {"order": 46, "title": "Apply for a defibrillator for your community", "channel": "The Charity's Own Pages", "summary": "The charity's funded scheme for eligible community groups. Included because this chapter should not end at awareness: if you have read the survival arithmetic and your village hall or sports club has no device, this is the page that does something about it. Check the current application window on the page itself.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/how-you-can-help/how-to-save-a-life/defibrillators/apply-for-a-free-defibrillator-for-your-community", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 47, "title": "Resuscitation Council UK on defibrillation", "channel": "Independent Reference and Authority", "summary": "The independent authority's public guidance on defibrillators, added alongside the charity's. The point worth taking from it, and it is the single most important thing in this chapter: a public access defibrillator is designed to be used by someone with no training, it will not deliver a shock unless it detects a rhythm that needs one, and it talks you through each step — the one rule is not to touch the person while it delivers a shock. Fear of doing harm is the main reason bystanders do not use them.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.resus.org.uk/public-resource/defibrillation", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 48, "title": "Automated external defibrillators, independently described", "channel": "Independent Reference and Authority", "summary": "The reference article on the devices themselves — how they work, how they decide whether to shock, their deployment history and the evidence on public access programmes. Read alongside the Council's guidance and the charity's map. Useful particularly for anyone responsible for deciding whether an organisation should install one, which is a question this experience's other sources approach from an advocacy position rather than a neutral one.", "sourceUrl": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automated_external_defibrillator", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 49, "title": "Resuscitation Council UK guidance for defibrillator owners", "channel": "Independent Reference and Authority", "summary": "The practical document for organisations rather than bystanders: what is involved in owning, siting, registering and maintaining a defibrillator. It answers the question a school, church, gym or employer actually faces: who is responsible for the device once it is on the wall. Independent of the BHF.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.resus.org.uk/additional-guidance/guidance-defibrillators", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 50, "title": "Annual report", "channel": "The Charity's Own Pages", "summary": "The summary of the audited accounts and the most checkable thing the charity publishes. For 2025/26: £175.3m raised, of which £105.5m from legacies and a record £62.1m from fundraising; £103.3m spent on research, £96.2m after accounting adjustments; total spending £200.7m. Any figure in this experience can be audited against this page and the full report linked from it.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/annual-report", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 51, "title": "Annual report and accounts", "channel": "Documents and Data", "summary": "The full audited report as published. Every financial figure in this experience traces here — income, spend, reserves, governance, the auditor's opinion, and the detail of the retail operation that the summary pages compress into one line. Long, and the most checkable item here.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/-/media/files/british_heart_foundation_annual_report.pdf?rev=f5a0f7e6cbc84cbb8b597f14953a397c", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "pdf"}, {"order": 52, "title": "Leaving a gift in your will", "channel": "The Charity's Own Pages", "summary": "Placed in the income chapter rather than the donation one because of what the accounts show: at £105.5m in 2025/26, legacies are comfortably the charity's largest single income source — larger than all fundraising combined. That is a remarkable dependency and worth understanding before judging anything else about how the organisation raises money.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/how-you-can-help/leave-a-gift-in-your-will", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 53, "title": "How you can help", "channel": "The Charity's Own Pages", "summary": "The whole menu of ways money and time reach the charity, which is the aggregate behind the £62.1m fundraising line. Included here to make the structure of the income legible before the chapters that break each route down.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/how-you-can-help", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 54, "title": "Cardiomyopathy UK", "channel": "Independent Reference and Authority", "summary": "A second, independent cardiac charity, added to the funding chapter to make a structural point the BHF's own pages cannot: the BHF is the largest cardiovascular charity in Britain but it is not the only one, and smaller condition-specific organisations occupy space it does not. Anyone assessing where to give, or which organisation to approach about a specific condition, should know the landscape has more than one occupant.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.cardiomyopathy.org/", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 55, "title": "Where your money goes", "channel": "The Charity's Own Pages", "summary": "The clearest ratio the charity publishes, for 2024/25: of every £1 raised, 72p went directly to beating cardiovascular disease and 28p was reinvested to generate future funds. Underneath that, £197.5m of mission spending, £108.4m committed to research, £47.2m on health information and support, £51.4m invested to grow income. The 28p is the number a sceptic asks about and the charity prints it, which is the right way to be held to it.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/where-your-money-goes", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 56, "title": "Research funding across the UK", "channel": "Learn It and Do It", "summary": "Interactive maps of where the charity's research and clinical trials are funded, which answers a question donors genuinely ask and charities rarely answer well: is any of this happening near me. Worth a browse in the spending chapter because it makes £103m geographically real.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/our-research/research-funding-across-the-uk-visualisations", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "interactive"}, {"order": 57, "title": "Sixty years of research and innovation", "channel": "Documents and Data", "summary": "The charity's own retrospective of its first sixty years of funding, as a single document. Read it for the shape of the thing rather than the claims: cardiovascular medicine improved enormously over that period through many funders at once, and a sixty-year summary from one of them is a useful account rather than a complete one.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/-/media/files/for-professionals/research/bhf_60-years-of-pioneering-research-and-innovation-(1).pdf", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "pdf"}, {"order": 58, "title": "Information and support", "channel": "The Charity's Own Pages", "summary": "What £54.2m of non-research spending actually buys, and the part of the charity a patient meets. Condition guidance, test and treatment explainers, practical help on driving, travel, work and exercise, emotional support, and the Heart Matters magazine. An honest account of a research charity has to include what else it pays for.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/informationsupport", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 59, "title": "Cardiac Risk in the Young", "channel": "Independent Reference and Authority", "summary": "A third independent charity, and the one with the most genuinely different emphasis. CRY works specifically on young sudden cardiac death — awareness, screening, research and supporting bereaved families. Its existence and its priorities are the clearest available evidence that cardiovascular charity is not one undifferentiated cause, and its screening advocacy is covered further in the policy chapter, where it makes a case the BHF's material does not.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.c-r-y.org.uk/", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 60, "title": "The professors the charity funds", "channel": "Research, Universities and Industry", "summary": "Twenty-three named professors with their institutions and fields, which is the most concrete answer available to what does a research charity actually buy. Oxford, Cambridge, Edinburgh, Imperial, King's, Leicester, Bristol, Leeds, Manchester and Queen Mary are all represented. Research Professorships have been awarded since 2025; the Personal Chairs were awarded up to 2024. Browse it before forming any view about overheads.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/our-research/our-top-professors", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 61, "title": "Professor Charalambos Antoniades, Oxford", "channel": "Research, Universities and Industry", "summary": "The charity's Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine at Oxford's Radcliffe Department of Medicine, studying how fat around the arteries signals to the heart and blood vessels in ways that lead to heart attacks and strokes — combining scan types to identify the plaques most likely to rupture, and using AI across genetic, molecular and imaging data from thousands of people. A fair example of the profile pages: detailed on the science, and carrying no quotation from the man himself.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/our-research/our-top-professors/professor-charalambos-antoniades", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 62, "title": "Professor John Danesh, Cambridge", "channel": "Research, Universities and Industry", "summary": "Professor of medicine and epidemiology at Cambridge, working on how heart and circulatory diseases develop in multi-ethnic groups, with particular attention to people of South Asian background, who face higher risk. Read it immediately before or after Sohel's account later in this experience: the charity's own page credits this team's work in the same breath as his story, which is as direct a link between a donor's money and a patient's question as this experience contains.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/our-research/our-top-professors/professor-john-danesh", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 63, "title": "Professor Hugh Watkins, Oxford", "channel": "Research, Universities and Industry", "summary": "The professor who leads CureHeart, the charity's largest ever grant. His profile here is the institutional version; his own words are in the World Heart Day article in the chapter on people, where he is interviewed alongside a twenty-year-old survivor of the condition he studies.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/our-research/our-top-professors/professor-hugh-watkins", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 64, "title": "Information for researchers", "channel": "Research, Universities and Industry", "summary": "The application side, written for scientists: what the charity funds, how to apply, how awards are decided, and when committees sit — most four times a year, the Clinical Studies and Translational Awards committees twice. The most useful page here for anyone assessing the charity as a funder rather than as a cause.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/for-professionals/information-for-researchers", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 65, "title": "Heart failure, independently described", "channel": "Independent Reference and Authority", "summary": "Added to the research chapter because heart failure is where a large share of cardiovascular research funding goes and because the term is widely misunderstood — it does not mean the heart has stopped, it means it is not pumping as well as it should, and it is a chronic condition people live with for years. An independent article is the right place to establish that, free of any charity's framing.", "sourceUrl": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart_failure", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 66, "title": "The European Society of Cardiology", "channel": "Independent Reference and Authority", "summary": "The professional body for cardiology across Europe, which publishes the clinical guidelines most European cardiologists work to. Added as an independent professional-community source: it shows what the specialty itself prioritises, which is not always what a national patient charity prioritises, and the gap between the two is one of the more interesting things about this field.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.escardio.org/", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 67, "title": "CureHeart", "channel": "Research, Universities and Industry", "summary": "The charity's biggest ever research grant: £30 million awarded in 2022 to Hugh Watkins at Oxford and Christine Seidman at Harvard, leading an international team on gene therapies to edit or silence the faulty genes behind inherited heart muscle diseases. Read the tense carefully — this aims to deliver a cure and is moving towards patient testing. Nobody has been cured yet and the charity does not claim otherwise.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/our-research/cureheart", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 68, "title": "Cardiovascular Grand Challenges", "channel": "Research, Universities and Industry", "summary": "A planned series of challenges over five years aimed at the field's biggest unsolved problems. Included as the structural counterpart to CureHeart: a funder large enough to make concentrated bets as well as spread small grants, which is a different kind of organisation from one that only does the latter.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/our-research/cardiovascular-grand-challenges", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 69, "title": "A gene therapy research centre", "channel": "Research, Universities and Industry", "summary": "Announced December 2024 with the Medical Research Council. Worth noting for the co-funding pattern it illustrates: the charity more often funds alongside another body than alone, which is also why attributing any result solely to it would be wrong.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/news-from-the-bhf/news-archive/2024/december/transformational-new-gene-therapy-research-centre-launched", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 70, "title": "Our research", "channel": "Research, Universities and Industry", "summary": "The research portfolio as presented to the public, and the page where the charity describes itself as the biggest independent funder of heart and circulatory research in the UK, funding around £100 million of projects a year. The hub to orient from before the trials and impact chapter.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/our-research", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 71, "title": "Cardiomyopathy, independently described", "channel": "Independent Reference and Authority", "summary": "The condition at the centre of the charity's largest research programme, described independently of the programme. Cardiomyopathy is a disease of the heart muscle itself, frequently genetic, and often the cause when an apparently healthy young person dies suddenly. Reading the independent article before the charity's account of its research makes the research easier to assess, because you can see what problem is actually being attacked.", "sourceUrl": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardiomyopathy", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 72, "title": "Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy specifically", "channel": "Independent Reference and Authority", "summary": "The most common inherited heart condition and the specific form most associated with sudden death in young athletes. It is also the condition that connects the research chapter to the screening argument in the policy chapter and to the bereavement accounts in chapter sixteen, several of which concern young people who died without a prior diagnosis. Worth reading as the thread that runs through those three chapters.", "sourceUrl": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypertrophic_cardiomyopathy", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 73, "title": "The impact of clinical trials", "channel": "Research, Universities and Industry", "summary": "The charity's account of how its funded trials reach patients. Read it as the bridge between a grant and a treatment, and read it alongside the attribution note in this chapter's introduction: trials have many funders, and a contribution is not sole credit.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/our-research/impact-of-clinical-trials", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 74, "title": "Research successes", "channel": "Research, Universities and Industry", "summary": "The achievements page, and the one to read most carefully. It speaks of clot-busting drugs, transplants and small devices to correct heartbeats, and names Professor Antoniades's work and CureHeart. Its language is hedged throughout — our research has helped, helped transform, is helping develop — and some entries are goals rather than results. The hedging is appropriate. What it does not carry is an explicit attribution caveat, so this experience supplies one rather than quoting the page as though it had.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/our-research/research-successes", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 75, "title": "Search funded research projects", "channel": "Learn It and Do It", "summary": "The directory of individual funded projects, searchable. The most direct available answer to what did the money actually buy, and the right tool for anyone who wants to check a claim rather than accept one.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/research-projects", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "interactive"}, {"order": 76, "title": "Research impact reports", "channel": "Documents and Data", "summary": "The charity's own impact reporting, which is the appropriate place to end a chapter about attribution. Read it as the organisation's self-assessment, clearly labelled as such — which is exactly how it is published, and more than many charities offer.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/our-research/research-successes/our-research-impact-reports", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "pdf"}, {"order": 77, "title": "Heart valve replacement: tissue heart valve", "channel": "Watch It Explained", "summary": "A procedure explainer, included in the research and impact chapter because it shows what the research pipeline eventually produces: a routine intervention that a patient will be offered and will have to decide about. Research chapters tend to stop at the discovery; a patient encounters it as a conversation about a valve. The video is the point where those two meet. Official BHF video, verified identifier.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJ_pvMkhEXE", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "video"}, {"order": 78, "title": "Atrial fibrillation, independently described", "channel": "Independent Reference and Authority", "summary": "The most common sustained heart rhythm disturbance, a major cause of stroke, and frequently symptomless — which is why it appears in a chapter about trials and impact. It is one of the clearest cases where detection rather than treatment is the bottleneck, and therefore one of the clearest tests of whether awareness and screening interventions actually change outcomes. Independent reference, no charity framing.", "sourceUrl": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atrial_fibrillation", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 79, "title": "Myocarditis, from a condition-specific charity", "channel": "Independent Reference and Authority", "summary": "An independent charity's clinical information on myocarditis — inflammation of the heart muscle — included because it is a condition that received a great deal of public attention and a great deal of misinformation in recent years, and because a specialist patient organisation's page is a better source than general coverage. Illustrates the value of the condition-specific charities introduced earlier in this experience.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.cardiomyopathy.org/about-cardiomyopathy/related-disorders/myocarditis", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 80, "title": "CardioStars", "channel": "Research, Universities and Industry", "summary": "A partnership launched in March 2024 with Panacea Innovation to help translate cardiovascular research towards products and companies. Included with a proportionate framing: this is a young, comparatively small commercialisation effort rather than a mature drug-development arm, and it should be assessed as the former.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/news-from-the-bhf/news-archive/2024/march/bhf-partners-with-panacea-innovation-to-launch-cardiostars", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 81, "title": "The research strategy", "channel": "Research, Universities and Industry", "summary": "How the charity decides what to fund and why, which is the question a serious partner or major donor actually wants answered. Drier than the public pages and considerably more informative about where £100 million a year goes.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/for-professionals/information-for-researchers/our-research-strategy", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 82, "title": "Our online community", "channel": "The Charity's Own Pages", "summary": "A moderated forum for people living with heart conditions and those around them. Included in this chapter because it is the other thing the information-and-support budget pays for, and because for someone newly diagnosed at two in the morning it is worth more than a statistic.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/informationsupport/our-online-community", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 83, "title": "Policy and public affairs", "channel": "The Charity's Own Pages", "summary": "The charity's work with governments across the UK on prevention, diagnosis, treatment and NHS capacity. The least visible part of the organisation and a material part of what it achieves: a regulation on smoking, food or air quality can affect more people than any single trial. An account that omits this is incomplete.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/policy-and-public-affairs", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 84, "title": "CRY on national screening policy", "channel": "Independent Reference and Authority", "summary": "A genuine policy disagreement in the sector, and the most useful thing in this chapter. Cardiac Risk in the Young argues for cardiac screening of young people and has responded formally to the UK National Screening Committee's consultation on screening for conditions associated with sudden cardiac death. Screening is genuinely contested on evidence grounds — false positives, cost, and the consequences of diagnosing conditions that may never cause harm — and a file that presented cardiovascular charity as having one agreed policy position would be misleading.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.c-r-y.org.uk/cry-responds-to-the-national-screening-committee-opening-consultation-on-screening-for-cardiac-conditions-associated-with-sudden-cardiac-death/", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "article"}, {"order": 85, "title": "The evidence CRY cites for screening", "channel": "Independent Reference and Authority", "summary": "The research CRY puts behind its position: its own account of what it describes as the largest study of cardiac screening in young people. Linked so the argument can be assessed rather than taken on either side's word, and labelled for what it is — a charity's presentation of research supporting that charity's campaign. Read it alongside the national screening committee's own framing before forming a view.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.c-r-y.org.uk/largest-ever-study-of-cardiac-screening-in-young-people-shows-heart-checks-save-lives/", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "article"}, {"order": 86, "title": "CRY's screening programme in practice", "channel": "Independent Reference and Authority", "summary": "What the advocacy actually delivers: CRY runs subsidised cardiac screening events for young people. Included because it closes the loop between a policy position and a service, which is the test of whether a campaigning organisation is doing more than campaigning. If a close relative died suddenly and young, the first step is to ask your GP about referral to an NHS inherited cardiac conditions service; CRY's screening is an additional option, not a substitute.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.c-r-y.org.uk/screening", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 87, "title": "Events", "channel": "The Charity's Own Pages", "summary": "The events calendar: the London to Brighton Bike Ride and its off-road sibling, plus charity places at the Brighton Marathon, the Bath, Hackney, Big Half, Manchester and Royal Parks halves, the Great Manchester Run and the Edinburgh Marathon Festival, and free virtual challenges. Searchable by date and type, which is the only question most people actually have.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/how-you-can-help/events", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 88, "title": "London to Brighton Bike Ride", "channel": "The Charity's Own Pages", "summary": "The charity's signature event, and the one with the longest institutional history. Fifty-four miles from Clapham Common to Brighton seafront, in a field of thousands. Included as the concrete example: this is what the fundraising line in the accounts looks like on the ground.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/how-you-can-help/events/bike-rides/london-to-brighton-bike-ride", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 89, "title": "Fundraise your own way", "channel": "The Charity's Own Pages", "summary": "For everything not on the calendar — a collection, a quiz, a workplace challenge, a birthday. The practical scaffolding, including how to set up a page and pay money in. Most fundraising looks far more like this than like a mass-participation bike ride.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/how-you-can-help/fundraise", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 90, "title": "DECHOX", "channel": "The Charity's Own Pages", "summary": "A sponsored month without chocolate, which is a more serious proposition than it sounds and a good illustration of how mass fundraising actually works: a simple, shareable, slightly silly commitment that a lot of people will complete. Optional.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/how-you-can-help/fundraise/dechox", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 91, "title": "Heart Month", "channel": "The Charity's Own Pages", "summary": "The charity's annual February campaign, and where several of the published personal accounts in this experience were first gathered. Useful for seeing how a charity sources stories with consent rather than taking them.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/how-you-can-help/support-our-campaigns/heart-month", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 92, "title": "The London to Brighton off-road bike ride", "channel": "Watch It Explained", "summary": "One of the charity's named mass-participation events, shown rather than described. Worth a minute for anyone evaluating the charity as a partner or considering taking part: the events chapter lists what exists, and the video shows what the day actually looks like, which is the thing that determines whether people sign up. Official BHF video, verified identifier.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYJL8o8fBFE", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "video"}, {"order": 93, "title": "A corporate partnership, in practice", "channel": "Watch It Explained", "summary": "A video of a corporate fundraising activity with a named commercial partner, included because corporate partnership is abstract until you see what one actually consists of. For anyone assessing the charity as a partner, this is more informative than a partnerships page: it shows the format, the tone and the level of brand presence the charity is comfortable with. Official BHF video, verified identifier.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iU3LyckqZkI", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "video"}, {"order": 94, "title": "Donate items to our shops", "channel": "The Charity's Own Pages", "summary": "What the shops take: clothes, accessories, jewellery, homeware, kitchenware, toys, games, vinyl and media, and technology including phones, laptops and tablets, with a separate guide on wiping a phone before donating it. Also the list of what cannot be accepted, which is worth reading first because unsellable donations cost the charity money to dispose of.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/shop/donating-goods/donate-to-charity-shops", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 95, "title": "Book a free furniture collection", "channel": "The Charity's Own Pages", "summary": "The part of the retail operation that distinguishes it: a free home collection for furniture, electricals and homeware, which is how a charity sells things too large to carry into a shop. If you are clearing a house or replacing a sofa, this is the page.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/shop/donating-goods/book-furniture-collection-near-me", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 96, "title": "Post your donations free", "channel": "The Charity's Own Pages", "summary": "A freepost label and a Collect+ drop-off, for small items and for anyone without a shop nearby. The least known of the donation routes and the easiest. Optional.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/shop/donating-goods/post-your-donations", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 97, "title": "The online shop", "channel": "The Charity's Own Pages", "summary": "New goods and donated items sold online, alongside the physical shops. Included for completeness: buying is a legitimate way to support the charity, and for some people an easier one than giving.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/shop", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 98, "title": "Find a shop near you", "channel": "Learn It and Do It", "summary": "The charity's location finder, covering clothing shops, books and music shops, furniture and electrical stores, pop-ups and CPR training locations. Use it before a trip: furniture and electricals are only taken at some sites, which saves a wasted journey with a full car.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/find-bhf-near-you", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "map"}, {"order": 99, "title": "Shop closures announced in 2026", "channel": "The Charity's Own Pages", "summary": "The charity's own announcement, in June 2026, of proposals to close around 150 shops and stores over two financial years — about 90 by the end of March 2027 and the rest by March 2028 — citing rising operating costs and changing customer habits. Read every shop figure in this experience with this attached: the retail estate is being cut back to keep it commercially sustainable.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/news-from-the-bhf/news-archive/2026/june/bhf-proposes-150-shop-closures-to-maintain-sustainable-retail-network", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 100, "title": "A branch honoured for its contribution", "channel": "Watch It Explained", "summary": "The charity's 2026 outstanding contribution award for its Carterton branch, included in the shops and local fundraising chapter because branch volunteers are the mechanism this part of the charity actually runs on. The award videos are short and specific, and they name real people and real places — which is a more honest picture of a national charity's local operation than any corporate summary of it. Official BHF video, verified identifier.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TiM4e43a6KY", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "video"}, {"order": 101, "title": "Volunteer", "channel": "The Charity's Own Pages", "summary": "The hub for all six routes: shops, local fundraising groups, events, the Action Team, the Duke of Edinburgh's Award and workplace volunteering. The page is explicit that opportunities are flexible and any amount of time helps, and notably does not state a minimum commitment or age limit — so check the FAQ rather than assuming either way.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/how-you-can-help/volunteer", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 102, "title": "Volunteer in our shops", "channel": "The Charity's Own Pages", "summary": "The largest single volunteering route, and the backbone of the shop estate. Sorting and pricing stock, serving customers, building displays. Read it alongside Amy Lowe's and Kel Hughes's accounts in the chapter on people — both started here and both ended up employed.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/how-you-can-help/volunteer/volunteer-in-our-shops", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 103, "title": "Search volunteering opportunities", "channel": "Learn It and Do It", "summary": "The charity's own volunteer portal, searchable by role and event type. Scroll it for two minutes and the scale of unpaid work behind a national charity becomes concrete in a way no annual report conveys.", "sourceUrl": "https://myvolunteer.bhf.org.uk/event/list", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "interactive"}, {"order": 104, "title": "The Action Team", "channel": "The Charity's Own Pages", "summary": "For one-off volunteering rather than a standing commitment: you join a list and hear about opportunities as they come up. The honest option for people who want to help but cannot promise a regular slot, which is most people.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/how-you-can-help/volunteer/action-team", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 105, "title": "Volunteering FAQs", "channel": "The Charity's Own Pages", "summary": "Where the specifics the main pages omit actually live — commitment, references, expenses, age requirements. Linked rather than summarised precisely because this experience will not invent a rule the charity has not published.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/how-you-can-help/volunteer/volunteer-faqs", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 106, "title": "Volunteer of the Year Awards 2026", "channel": "Watch It Explained", "summary": "The charity's own volunteer awards, and the entry point to the four named-volunteer videos that follow. Included because the most persuasive thing about volunteering for an organisation is usually the people already doing it. Official BHF video, verified identifier, title as published.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7_ffTixemk", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "video"}, {"order": 107, "title": "Valerie McIlveen, Northern Ireland", "channel": "Watch It Explained", "summary": "A named volunteer honoured in the charity's 2026 outstanding contribution awards for Northern Ireland. Included with her name because the charity published it with her name and because the alternative — describing an anonymous volunteer — would be weaker and less respectful. Short, specific, and a better answer to what does volunteering here involve than any role description. Official BHF video, verified identifier.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGbm15BDcnQ", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "video"}, {"order": 108, "title": "Bill and Margaret Black, Scotland", "channel": "Watch It Explained", "summary": "The Scottish outstanding contribution award for 2026, given to a couple. Worth noticing as a pattern across these four videos: long-service charity volunteering is frequently done by couples and by families rather than by individuals, which is a real feature of how this kind of organisation sustains itself and is invisible in any statistic about volunteer numbers. Official BHF video, verified identifier.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyZv-0rug9A", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "video"}, {"order": 109, "title": "The Mariani Family, Cymru Wales", "channel": "Watch It Explained", "summary": "The Welsh award for 2026, given to a family — which completes the four-nation set alongside England, Northern Ireland and Scotland and makes a small structural point about the charity: it awards separately across the four nations, which is a choice about how a UK-wide organisation recognises local effort. Official BHF video, verified identifier.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCCQ1HlsQX8", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "video"}, {"order": 110, "title": "A survivor meets the scientist", "channel": "People, In Their Own Published Words", "summary": "Published 29 September 2026. Jack Taylor, 20, from Nottingham, collapsed playing basketball at 17 in February 2024 with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy linked to the MYBPC3 gene; he now studies software engineering at Nottingham Trent. He meets Professor Hugh Watkins, who with Professor Christine Seidman of Harvard leads CureHeart. Jack: “Hearing about this research has made me not only grateful but also hopeful. Hopefully one day I’ll be cured of this, but more importantly, the next generation.” Watkins: “It’s really special meeting Jack.” And on a cure: “By the time Jack has kids, say they inherit the gene change, I really hope by that time we’ll have found a cure.” The funder, the scientist and the patient, in one article, all named and all quoted.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/news-from-the-bhf/news-archive/2026/september/cardiac-arrest-survivor-meets-cureheart-scientist-world-heart-day", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 111, "title": "Sohel's story", "channel": "People, In Their Own Published Words", "summary": "Sohel had a cardiac arrest at his gym at 47, triggered by a heart attack, while doing his usual Monday circuit training. His instructor Mike performed CPR until paramedics arrived with a defibrillator. He had a triple bypass, has since reviewed his risk factors, and completed a 5k trail challenge with his son Solly to raise money for the charity. He says that within the South Asian community he does not think many people know about heart attacks, and that he believes we need more funding for this research. The charity's page sets his account beside Professor John Danesh's work on cardiovascular risk in multi-ethnic groups — the clearest link in this experience between a question a patient asks and research a donor funded.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/how-you-can-help/support-our-campaigns/heart-month/sohels-story", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 112, "title": "Dean's story", "channel": "People, In Their Own Published Words", "summary": "A strength and conditioning coach from Harrogate and a father of two, Dean had a heart attack in November 2024 at 53 and mistook it for heartburn. He felt unwell for several days and on about the fourth was too ill to train a client; he rang NHS 111, the operator recognised his symptoms immediately, and an angiogram at Leeds General Infirmary cleared a blocked artery. A consultant told his family he had come very close to dying. His own line is the entire argument for the second chapter of this experience: not recognising heart attack symptoms left me close to death. He credits scientific research generally rather than the charity specifically, and this experience does not upgrade that.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/keep-us-beating/deans-story", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 113, "title": "Helen and Maddy's story", "channel": "People, In Their Own Published Words", "summary": "Helen had a cardiac arrest at 53 while salsa dancing; the people around her performed CPR and used the defibrillator at the venue, and hospital tests found she had also had a heart attack with several blocked arteries. She spent more than two weeks in hospital while her daughter Maddy, then sitting A-levels, was alone at home. Helen had bypass surgery and cardiac rehabilitation including psychological help and art therapy. Helen: I was so lucky that the people around me worked together to save my life, and I am determined to live my life. Maddy: I've learned I'm strong and I can cope, and we understand each other better as a result of it all. The clearest illustration in this experience of why the CPR chapter matters, and of who else a cardiac arrest happens to.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/informationsupport/heart-matters-magazine/my-story/helen-and-maddy-story", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 114, "title": "Forty years of fundraising", "channel": "People, In Their Own Published Words", "summary": "Shirley West of Guildford, known locally as Mrs Guildford and The Heart Lady, turns 79 this year and has volunteered for the charity for 40 years, chairing the Guildford fundraising group. She got involved after helping her friend Maureen Lemin organise a raffle, runs bucket collections, quiz nights and an open garden, and has been presented with the British Empire Medal. Her stated approach: put the fun into fundraising. Included because the £62.1m fundraising line in the accounts is, in practice, several thousand people doing some version of this.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/how-you-can-help/volunteer/volunteer-stories/the-heart-lady-celebrates-40-years-with-bhf", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 115, "title": "From volunteering to a job", "channel": "People, In Their Own Published Words", "summary": "Amy Lowe began volunteering at the charity's Manchester Piccadilly shop to build her confidence and improve her mental health, found she loved the variety of the work, and later moved into a paid role. Included because it documents something charity retail does that rarely gets counted: the shops are a route back into work for people who need one, and that is a second kind of output alongside the money.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/how-you-can-help/volunteer/volunteer-stories/amy-lowe-volunteering-opened-a-massive-door-in-my-life", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 116, "title": "Volunteer stories", "channel": "People, In Their Own Published Words", "summary": "The index the previous two accounts come from, and worth browsing rather than reading. It is the thing this charity publishes that many do not: named volunteers saying in their own words why they turn up. Among them Kel Hughes, who volunteered in the Teddington shop, enjoyed the atmosphere, applied for a Sales Assistant role at Staines after eight months and got it.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/how-you-can-help/volunteer/volunteer-stories", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 117, "title": "CRY's My Story archive — content note", "channel": "Other People's Accounts", "summary": "A content note first, because this material is heavier than anything else in this experience. Cardiac Risk in the Young hosts an archive of accounts of young sudden cardiac death, written and submitted by bereaved families and partners, organised by the writer's relationship to the person who died — mother, father, sibling, partner, grandparent, child, friend. CRY explicitly invites these submissions so that others may read them and feel less alone, which is what establishes consent. They are independent of the BHF, they are not recovery stories, and several concern deaths where no cause was ever found. Read them if that is useful to you and skip this chapter's remainder if it is not.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.c-r-y.org.uk/my-story/", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "article"}, {"order": 118, "title": "Darren Crawford, on Michelle McFeely", "channel": "Other People's Accounts", "summary": "Darren Crawford's published account of the death of his girlfriend, Michelle McFeely, of Coleraine, aged 30, for which a post mortem found no cause. Linked rather than retold, because the words belong to him. Published by CRY under his name, and included because an account in which nothing is explained is truer to this subject than one that resolves.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.c-r-y.org.uk/michelle-mcfeely-mystory/", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "article"}, {"order": 119, "title": "Craig Salmon", "channel": "Other People's Accounts", "summary": "A further account from CRY's archive, linked under the name the charity publishes it with and deliberately left uncharacterised: one example of what the archive holds is enough, and summarising every entry would turn individual accounts into a catalogue. The archive index is there if you want to choose for yourself.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.c-r-y.org.uk/craig-salmon-mystory/", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "article"}, {"order": 120, "title": "Hannah Taylor", "channel": "Other People's Accounts", "summary": "A further account from CRY's archive, linked under the name the charity publishes it with and deliberately left uncharacterised for the same reason. Listed separately rather than bundled because a person's account is not a supporting detail of another person's account, and giving each its own entry is the correct way to treat them.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.c-r-y.org.uk/hannah-taylor-mystory/", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "article"}, {"order": 121, "title": "myheart — young people living with a diagnosis", "channel": "Other People's Accounts", "summary": "CRY's network for young people who have been diagnosed with a cardiac condition, as distinct from the bereavement archive. Included because the two halves of this subject are genuinely different: being diagnosed young with a heart condition you will live with for decades is not the same experience as surviving a cardiac event in later life, and almost nothing else here addresses it. Independent of the BHF.", "sourceUrl": "http://www.myheart.org.uk", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 122, "title": "The peer community: 71,245 members", "channel": "Other People's Accounts", "summary": "The most substantive source of other people's words in this experience, and a different kind of evidence entirely. The BHF's community on HealthUnlocked had 71,245 members and 41,341 posts as of 30 October 2026. What it contains is not curated case studies but people mid-problem, asking each other: returning to exercise after a cardiac arrest, whether gentle exercise classes are safe with a pacemaker, what a heart monitor shows with vasospastic angina, muscle pain after a statin dose increase, feeling shaky after too much coffee. That is the texture a charity's published stories cannot show, because published stories have endings.", "sourceUrl": "https://healthunlocked.com/bhf", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "social"}, {"order": 123, "title": "How to read a peer forum, and how not to", "channel": "Other People's Accounts", "summary": "A necessary caveat on the peer community above. A peer community is authoritative about experience and not about medicine. It will tell you accurately what living with a condition feels like, what questions people actually have and what nobody warned them about — all of which are genuinely valuable and largely absent from clinical material. It will also contain confident wrong answers, unrepresentative experiences and occasional dangerous suggestions. Use it for company and for questions to ask, and take every clinical decision to the NHS pages, your GP, 111, or 999 if it is urgent.", "sourceUrl": null, "editorNote": null, "sourceType": null}, {"order": 124, "title": "The Heart Helpline", "channel": "The Charity's Own Pages", "summary": "Cardiac nurses on 0808 802 1234, freephone, Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm. This is the service to use if you arrived here worried rather than generous. Not an emergency line — for a suspected heart attack or cardiac arrest the answer is 999.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/informationsupport/heart-helpline", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 125, "title": "Donate", "channel": "The Charity's Own Pages", "summary": "The charity's main donation page and the correct starting point. One-off or regular by card, Apple Pay, Google Pay, PayPal or Direct Debit; Gift Aid; text to donate; by post; through your salary; shares; in memory; the weekly lottery and raffle; and donated goods. It states that at least 70p of every £1 goes to lifesaving research and that Gift Aid adds 25 per cent at no cost to you. Every link in this chapter was checked against this page rather than reconstructed.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/how-you-can-help/donate", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 126, "title": "The donation form", "channel": "Learn It and Do It", "summary": "The charity's official donation page, handling one-off and regular gifts by card, Apple Pay, Google Pay, PayPal or Direct Debit. This is the real page, checked rather than reconstructed. If you take one action from this experience the charity would want it to be this; if you would rather it were the fifteen-minute CPR course, that is a defensible choice and arguably the better one.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/how-you-can-help/donate/your-donation", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "interactive"}, {"order": 127, "title": "Gift Aid", "channel": "The Charity's Own Pages", "summary": "The mechanism that quietly improves almost everything else here. On a cash gift from a UK taxpayer the charity reclaims 25 per cent at no cost to you; on goods you donate to a shop, Gift Aid makes the donation worth 25 per cent more than whatever the item sells for. Five minutes of reading that changes the arithmetic of every other way of giving in this experience.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/how-you-can-help/donate/gift-aid", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 128, "title": "Giving in memory", "channel": "The Charity's Own Pages", "summary": "For donations in someone's name, including funeral collections and tribute pages, and the Heart of Steel memorial on which a name can be engraved from £30. Handled with more care than most pages on the site. If you are here for this reason, this is the page you want rather than the general form.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/how-you-can-help/donate/give-in-memory", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 129, "title": "Donating through your salary", "channel": "The Charity's Own Pages", "summary": "Giving from pay before tax through an employer's scheme, which costs the donor less per pound received than a standard gift. The least-used efficient option in the charity's range, and if you are employed and already give monthly, probably the highest-leverage five minutes in this chapter.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/how-you-can-help/donate/donate-through-your-salary", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 130, "title": "Support after a cardiac arrest", "channel": "Other People's Accounts", "summary": "The Resuscitation Council UK's resource for survivors and their families, included because what happens to someone after a cardiac arrest gets far less attention than the arrest itself. Surviving a cardiac arrest frequently involves cognitive and psychological consequences that nobody prepares people for. Independent of the BHF and the most useful thing here for anyone in that position.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.resus.org.uk/public-resource/support-after-cardiac-arrest", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 131, "title": "The discharge resource", "channel": "Other People's Accounts", "summary": "The companion document to the Council's support resource, written to be given to people leaving hospital after a cardiac arrest and to those caring for them. Linked because it is specific and practical rather than motivational, and because a reader who has arrived here after an event in their own family needs something of this kind more than they need a donation page. Published by the Resuscitation Council UK.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.resus.org.uk/publications/support-after-cardiac-arrest-discharge-resource", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "pdf"}, {"order": 132, "title": "Where the broader source mix leaves you", "channel": "Other People's Accounts", "summary": "A closing note on how this experience is built. Most of what is here is still the British Heart Foundation's own material, and that is appropriate for an experience about the British Heart Foundation — but a route built only from an organisation's own pages can only tell you what that organisation says about itself. The independent authorities, the encyclopaedia references, the other charities, the videos and the peer community are here so that the charity's claims sit next to things it did not write. Where they agree, believe it more.", "sourceUrl": null, "editorNote": null, "sourceType": null}], "bestFor": "Best for anyone assessing the British Heart Foundation as a whole, taking all seventeen chapters in order from who they are to how to give.", "journeyId": "j1", "stepCount": 132}, {"name": "Learn to Save Someone's Life in Fifteen Minutes", "steps": [{"order": 1, "title": "Cardiac arrest", "channel": "The Charity's Own Pages", "summary": "The other condition, and the distinction this chapter exists for. A cardiac arrest is the heart suddenly stopping; a heart attack is a loss of blood flow to part of the heart muscle. The response differs: a cardiac arrest needs CPR and a defibrillator, immediately, from whoever is there. The NHS links to this very page from its own heart attack guidance, which is a fair indication of how authoritative it is considered.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/informationsupport/conditions/cardiac-arrest", "editorNote": "Start here. A cardiac arrest is the heart stopping, and it needs you, not a hospital.", "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 2, "title": "Heart attack", "channel": "The Charity's Own Pages", "summary": "The primary source for this chapter and the most important page in the experience. It lists the symptoms, instructs you to call 999, and adds that you should not worry about wasting anyone's time. It also states that symptoms differ between people, that you may not have all of them, and that although women and men generally experience the same symptoms, research shows women tend not to recognise them as a heart attack as quickly. Read the page itself; the context around each symptom is what makes it useful rather than frightening.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/informationsupport/conditions/heart-attack", "editorNote": "The other condition. Call 999, and do not worry about wasting anyone's time.", "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 3, "title": "NHS: Heart attack", "channel": "NHS Guidance", "summary": "The NHS's own guidance, included alongside the charity's so you can see two independent official sources agreeing. Its emergency box is headed Immediate action required: call 999 if, and it adds an instruction the charity's page does not: do not drive yourself to A and E. It also distinguishes cardiac arrest from heart attack and links to the charity's cardiac arrest page to explain it.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/heart-attack/", "editorNote": "The NHS saying the same thing, plus: do not drive yourself to A and E.", "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 4, "title": "Heart attack vs cardiac arrest: what's the difference?", "channel": "Watch It Explained", "summary": "The single most useful addition to this experience. The distinction between a heart attack and a cardiac arrest is the thing this chapter exists to establish, it is the thing the public most reliably gets wrong, and it determines what a bystander should actually do. The BHF has made a short video explaining it, which is a better first encounter with the distinction than any amount of prose. Watch this before reading the rest of the chapter. Official BHF video, identifier verified, title as published.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkohnIY93HY", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "video"}, {"order": 5, "title": "How to save a life", "channel": "The Charity's Own Pages", "summary": "The hub for the charity's CPR and defibrillator work: step-by-step CPR guidance, how to recognise a cardiac arrest, training for schools and organisations, the defibrillator pages and a funded defibrillator scheme for eligible community groups. Start here, then do the fifteen-minute course. This chapter is the reason to send someone this experience who has no interest whatsoever in charities.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/how-you-can-help/how-to-save-a-life", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 6, "title": "How to do CPR", "channel": "The Charity's Own Pages", "summary": "The written instructions, for reading before you need them and for the uncomfortable fact that most people have seen CPR performed only on television. Covers adult CPR and points to the separate guidance for children and babies, which differs and matters.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/how-you-can-help/how-to-save-a-life/how-to-do-cpr", "editorNote": "Read it before you need it. Child and baby CPR differ.", "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 7, "title": "RevivR: learn CPR in 15 minutes", "channel": "Learn It and Do It", "summary": "The free interactive course, and the single most consequential link in this experience. About fifteen minutes on a phone or tablet, practising chest compressions on a cushion, with feedback and a mock 999 call, ending in a certificate. Built for adult CPR. The charity's figures for why: over 40,000 out-of-hospital cardiac arrests a year in the UK, fewer than one in ten survive, and prompt CPR with a defibrillator can more than double the chance of survival. Do this one rather than bookmarking it.", "sourceUrl": "https://revivr.bhf.org.uk/", "editorNote": "Do this one now. Fifteen minutes, a cushion, a certificate.", "sourceType": "interactive"}, {"order": 8, "title": "Resuscitation Council UK: how to do CPR", "channel": "Independent Reference and Authority", "summary": "The independent authority's own public guidance on CPR, and the most important addition to this chapter. The Resuscitation Council UK sets the resuscitation guidelines used across the NHS. Where its technique guidance and the BHF's agree, you can be confident the advice is settled rather than one organisation's house style — and they do agree. Read both; this one is the source the clinical world defers to.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.resus.org.uk/public-resource/how-do-cpr", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 9, "title": "Defibrillators", "channel": "The Charity's Own Pages", "summary": "What they are, what they do, how to use one, and the thing most people need told: a defibrillator will not let you shock someone who does not need it, and you cannot make things worse by fetching one. Read this alongside the CPR pages; in a cardiac arrest the two are a single action, not alternatives.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/how-you-can-help/how-to-save-a-life/defibrillators", "editorNote": "You cannot shock someone who does not need it. Fetch the thing.", "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 10, "title": "Resuscitation Council UK on defibrillation", "channel": "Independent Reference and Authority", "summary": "The independent authority's public guidance on defibrillators, added alongside the charity's. The point worth taking from it, and it is the single most important thing in this chapter: a public access defibrillator is designed to be used by someone with no training, it will not deliver a shock unless it detects a rhythm that needs one, and it talks you through each step — the one rule is not to touch the person while it delivers a shock. Fear of doing harm is the main reason bystanders do not use them.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.resus.org.uk/public-resource/defibrillation", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 11, "title": "The Circuit: the national defibrillator network", "channel": "The Charity's Own Pages", "summary": "The map ambulance services consult in a cardiac arrest call. Over 100,000 devices registered, and tens of thousands the charity believes are not. The figure that makes the case: every minute without CPR and defibrillation reduces survival by up to ten per cent, so a device that is present but unmapped may as well be absent. Registration is free and also brings maintenance reminders for whoever looks after it.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/how-you-can-help/how-to-save-a-life/defibrillators/national-defibrillator-network-the-circuit", "editorNote": "A device nobody can find may as well not exist.", "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 12, "title": "DefibFinder: find your nearest defibrillator", "channel": "Learn It and Do It", "summary": "The public face of The Circuit: a searchable map of registered defibrillators. Two minutes well spent now rather than in an emergency — look up your street, your workplace and wherever you exercise, and notice whether there is anything near you at all.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.defibfinder.uk/", "editorNote": "Look up your street, your office and your gym. Two minutes.", "sourceType": "map"}, {"order": 13, "title": "Apply for a defibrillator for your community", "channel": "The Charity's Own Pages", "summary": "The charity's funded scheme for eligible community groups. Included because this chapter should not end at awareness: if you have read the survival arithmetic and your village hall or sports club has no device, this is the page that does something about it. Check the current application window on the page itself.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/how-you-can-help/how-to-save-a-life/defibrillators/apply-for-a-free-defibrillator-for-your-community", "editorNote": "If there is nothing near you, this page does something about it.", "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 14, "title": "Helen and Maddy's story", "channel": "People, In Their Own Published Words", "summary": "Helen had a cardiac arrest at 53 while salsa dancing; the people around her performed CPR and used the defibrillator at the venue, and hospital tests found she had also had a heart attack with several blocked arteries. She spent more than two weeks in hospital while her daughter Maddy, then sitting A-levels, was alone at home. Helen had bypass surgery and cardiac rehabilitation including psychological help and art therapy. Helen: I was so lucky that the people around me worked together to save my life, and I am determined to live my life. Maddy: I've learned I'm strong and I can cope, and we understand each other better as a result of it all. The clearest illustration in this experience of why the CPR chapter matters, and of who else a cardiac arrest happens to.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/informationsupport/heart-matters-magazine/my-story/helen-and-maddy-story", "editorNote": "Why it matters: bystanders and a venue defibrillator saved Helen's life.", "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 15, "title": "What we do", "channel": "The Charity's Own Pages", "summary": "The charity's own summary of its four strands — research, information and support, CPR and defibrillators, and policy — with the figures it chooses to lead with: over £100m of research funded a year, £437m of research currently in progress, at least 70p in every £1 reaching lifesaving work, over 100,000 defibrillators on The Circuit, 200,000 people reached by its CPR training, and a shop count that predates the closures announced in June 2026. The registration numbers are here too, which is how you verify any claim made about them, including the ones in this experience.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do", "editorNote": "Who runs the course you just did, and the registration numbers to check them.", "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 16, "title": "Risk factors", "channel": "The Charity's Own Pages", "summary": "The charity's hub, naming high cholesterol, high blood pressure, diabetes, obesity, mental health, smoking, physical inactivity, alcohol, stress, air pollution and family history, with its framing that many of these diseases are caused by risk factors that can be controlled, treated or modified. Note that it calls stress an indirect factor rather than a direct one.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/informationsupport/risk-factors", "editorNote": "Having learned to respond, this is how to lower the odds of needing it.", "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 17, "title": "UK cardiovascular disease factsheet", "channel": "Documents and Data", "summary": "The twice-yearly factsheet of key UK cardiovascular and risk-factor statistics, in the July 2026 edition. This is the document to cite, with its date, rather than any figure repeated second-hand. Deliberately linked rather than summarised here: a statistic lifted out of a dated factsheet and quoted undated is how misinformation starts.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/-/media/files/for-professionals/research/heart-statistics/bhf-cvd-statistics-uk-factsheet-jul26.pdf", "editorNote": "The scale behind the skill: the July 2026 factsheet, with its date.", "sourceType": "pdf"}, {"order": 18, "title": "Annual report", "channel": "The Charity's Own Pages", "summary": "The summary of the audited accounts and the most checkable thing the charity publishes. For 2025/26: £175.3m raised, of which £105.5m from legacies and a record £62.1m from fundraising; £103.3m spent on research, £96.2m after accounting adjustments; total spending £200.7m. Any figure in this experience can be audited against this page and the full report linked from it.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/annual-report", "editorNote": "Included for completeness rather than fit — where the money for RevivR and The Circuit comes from.", "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 19, "title": "Where your money goes", "channel": "The Charity's Own Pages", "summary": "The clearest ratio the charity publishes, for 2024/25: of every £1 raised, 72p went directly to beating cardiovascular disease and 28p was reinvested to generate future funds. Underneath that, £197.5m of mission spending, £108.4m committed to research, £47.2m on health information and support, £51.4m invested to grow income. The 28p is the number a sceptic asks about and the charity prints it, which is the right way to be held to it.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/where-your-money-goes", "editorNote": "And where it goes, including the CPR and defibrillator programmes.", "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 20, "title": "The professors the charity funds", "channel": "Research, Universities and Industry", "summary": "Twenty-three named professors with their institutions and fields, which is the most concrete answer available to what does a research charity actually buy. Oxford, Cambridge, Edinburgh, Imperial, King's, Leicester, Bristol, Leeds, Manchester and Queen Mary are all represented. Research Professorships have been awarded since 2025; the Personal Chairs were awarded up to 2024. Browse it before forming any view about overheads.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/our-research/our-top-professors", "editorNote": "A step outside this route's theme: the researchers the same funding pays for.", "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 21, "title": "CureHeart", "channel": "Research, Universities and Industry", "summary": "The charity's biggest ever research grant: £30 million awarded in 2022 to Hugh Watkins at Oxford and Christine Seidman at Harvard, leading an international team on gene therapies to edit or silence the faulty genes behind inherited heart muscle diseases. Read the tense carefully — this aims to deliver a cure and is moving towards patient testing. Nobody has been cured yet and the charity does not claim otherwise.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/our-research/cureheart", "editorNote": "Also outside the theme: the charity's largest single research bet.", "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 22, "title": "Research successes", "channel": "Research, Universities and Industry", "summary": "The achievements page, and the one to read most carefully. It speaks of clot-busting drugs, transplants and small devices to correct heartbeats, and names Professor Antoniades's work and CureHeart. Its language is hedged throughout — our research has helped, helped transform, is helping develop — and some entries are goals rather than results. The hedging is appropriate. What it does not carry is an explicit attribution caveat, so this experience supplies one rather than quoting the page as though it had.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/our-research/research-successes", "editorNote": "What the research has contributed, in the charity's own hedged wording.", "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 23, "title": "Policy and public affairs", "channel": "The Charity's Own Pages", "summary": "The charity's work with governments across the UK on prevention, diagnosis, treatment and NHS capacity. The least visible part of the organisation and a material part of what it achieves: a regulation on smoking, food or air quality can affect more people than any single trial. An account that omits this is incomplete.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/policy-and-public-affairs", "editorNote": "Closer to this route than it looks — CPR in schools and defibrillator access are policy wins.", "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 24, "title": "Heart Month", "channel": "The Charity's Own Pages", "summary": "The charity's annual February campaign, and where several of the published personal accounts in this experience were first gathered. Useful for seeing how a charity sources stories with consent rather than taking them.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/how-you-can-help/support-our-campaigns/heart-month", "editorNote": "Heart Month, which is when most people are asked to learn this.", "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 25, "title": "Donate items to our shops", "channel": "The Charity's Own Pages", "summary": "What the shops take: clothes, accessories, jewellery, homeware, kitchenware, toys, games, vinyl and media, and technology including phones, laptops and tablets, with a separate guide on wiping a phone before donating it. Also the list of what cannot be accepted, which is worth reading first because unsellable donations cost the charity money to dispose of.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/shop/donating-goods/donate-to-charity-shops", "editorNote": "Included for scene coverage: the shops that fund the rest of this.", "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 26, "title": "Volunteer", "channel": "The Charity's Own Pages", "summary": "The hub for all six routes: shops, local fundraising groups, events, the Action Team, the Duke of Edinburgh's Award and workplace volunteering. The page is explicit that opportunities are flexible and any amount of time helps, and notably does not state a minimum commitment or age limit — so check the FAQ rather than assuming either way.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/how-you-can-help/volunteer", "editorNote": "And the volunteering that does the same.", "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 27, "title": "Support after a cardiac arrest", "channel": "Other People's Accounts", "summary": "The Resuscitation Council UK's resource for survivors and their families, included because what happens to someone after a cardiac arrest gets far less attention than the arrest itself. Surviving a cardiac arrest frequently involves cognitive and psychological consequences that nobody prepares people for. Independent of the BHF and the most useful thing here for anyone in that position.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.resus.org.uk/public-resource/support-after-cardiac-arrest", "editorNote": "The right closer: what happens to someone after the arrest you helped them survive.", "sourceType": "webpage"}], "bestFor": "Best for anyone who wants the one skill worth taking from this file — heart attack versus cardiac arrest, then CPR, then finding your nearest defibrillator — though if someone is unresponsive and not breathing normally, stop reading and call 999.", "journeyId": "j2", "stepCount": 27}, {"name": "If You Are Worried About Your Heart", "steps": [{"order": 1, "title": "Heart attack", "channel": "The Charity's Own Pages", "summary": "The primary source for this chapter and the most important page in the experience. It lists the symptoms, instructs you to call 999, and adds that you should not worry about wasting anyone's time. It also states that symptoms differ between people, that you may not have all of them, and that although women and men generally experience the same symptoms, research shows women tend not to recognise them as a heart attack as quickly. Read the page itself; the context around each symptom is what makes it useful rather than frightening.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/informationsupport/conditions/heart-attack", "editorNote": "If this is happening now, stop reading and call 999.", "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 2, "title": "NHS: Heart attack", "channel": "NHS Guidance", "summary": "The NHS's own guidance, included alongside the charity's so you can see two independent official sources agreeing. Its emergency box is headed Immediate action required: call 999 if, and it adds an instruction the charity's page does not: do not drive yourself to A and E. It also distinguishes cardiac arrest from heart attack and links to the charity's cardiac arrest page to explain it.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/heart-attack/", "editorNote": "The NHS list, independently. Two official sources agreeing is the reassurance.", "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 3, "title": "Cardiac arrest", "channel": "The Charity's Own Pages", "summary": "The other condition, and the distinction this chapter exists for. A cardiac arrest is the heart suddenly stopping; a heart attack is a loss of blood flow to part of the heart muscle. The response differs: a cardiac arrest needs CPR and a defibrillator, immediately, from whoever is there. The NHS links to this very page from its own heart attack guidance, which is a fair indication of how authoritative it is considered.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/informationsupport/conditions/cardiac-arrest", "editorNote": "And the other condition, because the two are constantly confused.", "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 4, "title": "Heart attack symptoms in women", "channel": "The Charity's Own Pages", "summary": "The charity's dedicated page. Its position is that women and men generally experience the same symptoms, but that research shows women tend not to recognise them as a heart attack as quickly — which is why the page exists.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/informationsupport/conditions/heart-attack/signs-and-symptoms-of-heart-attacks-in-women", "editorNote": "Same symptoms in general; women tend to recognise them later.", "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 5, "title": "Conditions A to Z", "channel": "The Charity's Own Pages", "summary": "The full index, from coronary heart disease and heart failure to atrial fibrillation, stroke and spontaneous coronary artery dissection. The point of linking the index rather than a selection: there are many conditions under the heading of heart and circulatory disease, and a specific condition is almost always the real question.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/informationsupport/conditions", "editorNote": "A specific condition is almost always the real question.", "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 6, "title": "Risk factors", "channel": "The Charity's Own Pages", "summary": "The charity's hub, naming high cholesterol, high blood pressure, diabetes, obesity, mental health, smoking, physical inactivity, alcohol, stress, air pollution and family history, with its framing that many of these diseases are caused by risk factors that can be controlled, treated or modified. Note that it calls stress an indirect factor rather than a direct one.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/informationsupport/risk-factors", "editorNote": "Most of these can be controlled, treated or modified. That is the hopeful part.", "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 7, "title": "NHS: High blood pressure", "channel": "NHS Guidance", "summary": "The NHS view of the same risk factor, including when and how to get checked — which is the step the charity's own risk page does not spell out. Pair the two: the charity explains why it matters, the NHS tells you what to do about it.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/high-blood-pressure-hypertension/", "editorNote": "The NHS on what to actually do about it.", "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 8, "title": "Family history", "channel": "The Charity's Own Pages", "summary": "Included deliberately, because it is the factor people assume is a verdict. The charity says these diseases can run in families. Family history itself cannot be changed, but it raises risk rather than deciding the outcome, and the other factors in this chapter can still be controlled or treated. If a close relative died suddenly and young, ask your GP about referral to an NHS inherited cardiac conditions service. Relevant background to Jack Taylor's account later in this experience.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/informationsupport/risk-factors/family-history", "editorNote": "Family history is a risk, not a verdict.", "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 9, "title": "NHS Health Check", "channel": "NHS Guidance", "summary": "A free check for adults in England aged 40 to 74, covering blood pressure, cholesterol and cardiovascular risk. This is the concrete answer to how do I find out my risk, and it is the link in this chapter most likely to be acted on. If you have had a letter about one and not booked it, this is your nudge.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.nhs.uk/tests-and-treatments/nhs-health-check/", "editorNote": "Free, if you are 40 to 74 in England. Book it.", "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 10, "title": "The Heart Helpline", "channel": "The Charity's Own Pages", "summary": "Cardiac nurses on 0808 802 1234, freephone, Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm. This is the service to use if you arrived here worried rather than generous. Not an emergency line — for a suspected heart attack or cardiac arrest the answer is 999.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/informationsupport/heart-helpline", "editorNote": "Cardiac nurses, 0808 802 1234. Not an emergency line.", "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 11, "title": "Information and support", "channel": "The Charity's Own Pages", "summary": "What £54.2m of non-research spending actually buys, and the part of the charity a patient meets. Condition guidance, test and treatment explainers, practical help on driving, travel, work and exercise, emotional support, and the Heart Matters magazine. An honest account of a research charity has to include what else it pays for.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/informationsupport", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 12, "title": "Our online community", "channel": "The Charity's Own Pages", "summary": "A moderated forum for people living with heart conditions and those around them. Included in this chapter because it is the other thing the information-and-support budget pays for, and because for someone newly diagnosed at two in the morning it is worth more than a statistic.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/informationsupport/our-online-community", "editorNote": "People in the same position, at two in the morning.", "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 13, "title": "Dean's story", "channel": "People, In Their Own Published Words", "summary": "A strength and conditioning coach from Harrogate and a father of two, Dean had a heart attack in November 2024 at 53 and mistook it for heartburn. He felt unwell for several days and on about the fourth was too ill to train a client; he rang NHS 111, the operator recognised his symptoms immediately, and an angiogram at Leeds General Infirmary cleared a blocked artery. A consultant told his family he had come very close to dying. His own line is the entire argument for the second chapter of this experience: not recognising heart attack symptoms left me close to death. He credits scientific research generally rather than the charity specifically, and this experience does not upgrade that.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/keep-us-beating/deans-story", "editorNote": "Dean mistook it for heartburn for four days. Read this one.", "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 14, "title": "The British Heart Foundation, described independently", "channel": "Independent Reference and Authority", "summary": "The encyclopaedia article on the charity, included because most other accounts of the BHF here are written by the BHF. An independently maintained description gives you the founding date, the structure, the scale and the criticisms in one place, with citations you can follow. Where it differs in emphasis from the charity's own self-description, that difference is informative rather than an error in either.", "sourceUrl": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Heart_Foundation", "editorNote": "Who the charity is, described by someone other than the charity.", "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 15, "title": "NHS: Heart failure", "channel": "NHS Guidance", "summary": "Included in the statistics chapter rather than the symptoms one because of what the numbers conceal: heart and circulatory disease is not one condition, and aggregate mortality figures hide completely different illnesses with different trajectories. Heart failure is the clearest example of a condition people live with for years.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/heart-failure/", "editorNote": "Heart failure on the NHS, if that is the phrase you were given.", "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 16, "title": "RevivR: learn CPR in 15 minutes", "channel": "Learn It and Do It", "summary": "The free interactive course, and the single most consequential link in this experience. About fifteen minutes on a phone or tablet, practising chest compressions on a cushion, with feedback and a mock 999 call, ending in a certificate. Built for adult CPR. The charity's figures for why: over 40,000 out-of-hospital cardiac arrests a year in the UK, fewer than one in ten survive, and prompt CPR with a defibrillator can more than double the chance of survival. Do this one rather than bookmarking it.", "sourceUrl": "https://revivr.bhf.org.uk/", "editorNote": "Worth fifteen minutes for whoever you live with, rather than for you.", "sourceType": "interactive"}, {"order": 17, "title": "DefibFinder: find your nearest defibrillator", "channel": "Learn It and Do It", "summary": "The public face of The Circuit: a searchable map of registered defibrillators. Two minutes well spent now rather than in an emergency — look up your street, your workplace and wherever you exercise, and notice whether there is anything near you at all.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.defibfinder.uk/", "editorNote": "Where your nearest defibrillator is. Two minutes, and worth knowing.", "sourceType": "map"}, {"order": 18, "title": "Heart failure, independently described", "channel": "Independent Reference and Authority", "summary": "Added to the research chapter because heart failure is where a large share of cardiovascular research funding goes and because the term is widely misunderstood — it does not mean the heart has stopped, it means it is not pumping as well as it should, and it is a chronic condition people live with for years. An independent article is the right place to establish that, free of any charity's framing.", "sourceUrl": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart_failure", "editorNote": "Heart failure described independently, for a second account.", "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 19, "title": "Cardiomyopathy, independently described", "channel": "Independent Reference and Authority", "summary": "The condition at the centre of the charity's largest research programme, described independently of the programme. Cardiomyopathy is a disease of the heart muscle itself, frequently genetic, and often the cause when an apparently healthy young person dies suddenly. Reading the independent article before the charity's account of its research makes the research easier to assess, because you can see what problem is actually being attacked.", "sourceUrl": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardiomyopathy", "editorNote": "Cardiomyopathy, the inherited condition a family history usually means.", "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 20, "title": "Atrial fibrillation, independently described", "channel": "Independent Reference and Authority", "summary": "The most common sustained heart rhythm disturbance, a major cause of stroke, and frequently symptomless — which is why it appears in a chapter about trials and impact. It is one of the clearest cases where detection rather than treatment is the bottleneck, and therefore one of the clearest tests of whether awareness and screening interventions actually change outcomes. Independent reference, no charity framing.", "sourceUrl": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atrial_fibrillation", "editorNote": "Atrial fibrillation, independently described.", "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 21, "title": "Annual report", "channel": "The Charity's Own Pages", "summary": "The summary of the audited accounts and the most checkable thing the charity publishes. For 2025/26: £175.3m raised, of which £105.5m from legacies and a record £62.1m from fundraising; £103.3m spent on research, £96.2m after accounting adjustments; total spending £200.7m. Any figure in this experience can be audited against this page and the full report linked from it.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/annual-report", "editorNote": "Outside this route's purpose: the audited accounts, included for scene coverage.", "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 22, "title": "Heart Month", "channel": "The Charity's Own Pages", "summary": "The charity's annual February campaign, and where several of the published personal accounts in this experience were first gathered. Useful for seeing how a charity sources stories with consent rather than taking them.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/how-you-can-help/support-our-campaigns/heart-month", "editorNote": "Heart Month, when the charity asks people to check their own risk.", "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 23, "title": "Find a shop near you", "channel": "Learn It and Do It", "summary": "The charity's location finder, covering clothing shops, books and music shops, furniture and electrical stores, pop-ups and CPR training locations. Use it before a trip: furniture and electricals are only taken at some sites, which saves a wasted journey with a full car.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/find-bhf-near-you", "editorNote": "Included for scene coverage rather than fit: your nearest shop.", "sourceType": "map"}, {"order": 24, "title": "Volunteer", "channel": "The Charity's Own Pages", "summary": "The hub for all six routes: shops, local fundraising groups, events, the Action Team, the Duke of Edinburgh's Award and workplace volunteering. The page is explicit that opportunities are flexible and any amount of time helps, and notably does not state a minimum commitment or age limit — so check the FAQ rather than assuming either way.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/how-you-can-help/volunteer", "editorNote": "The same — volunteering, if you want to do something with the worry.", "sourceType": "webpage"}], "bestFor": "Best for someone who came here because of a symptom, a family history or a health-check letter, leading with the official guidance and the practical business of getting seen — though if you think it is a heart attack or a cardiac arrest, call 999 now.", "journeyId": "j3", "stepCount": 24}, {"name": "How the Charity Works, For Partners and Funders", "steps": [{"order": 1, "title": "What we do", "channel": "The Charity's Own Pages", "summary": "The charity's own summary of its four strands — research, information and support, CPR and defibrillators, and policy — with the figures it chooses to lead with: over £100m of research funded a year, £437m of research currently in progress, at least 70p in every £1 reaching lifesaving work, over 100,000 defibrillators on The Circuit, 200,000 people reached by its CPR training, and a shop count that predates the closures announced in June 2026. The registration numbers are here too, which is how you verify any claim made about them, including the ones in this experience.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 2, "title": "Our strategy", "channel": "The Charity's Own Pages", "summary": "The stated plan, which is the fairer way to judge an organisation than its achievements page: not what it has done but what it says it is trying to do next, and whether that is measurable. Read it, then read the annual report, and see whether the two agree.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/our-strategy", "editorNote": "Read the stated plan first, then test it against the accounts.", "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 3, "title": "The British Heart Foundation, described independently", "channel": "Independent Reference and Authority", "summary": "The encyclopaedia article on the charity, included because most other accounts of the BHF here are written by the BHF. An independently maintained description gives you the founding date, the structure, the scale and the criticisms in one place, with citations you can follow. Where it differs in emphasis from the charity's own self-description, that difference is informative rather than an error in either.", "sourceUrl": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Heart_Foundation", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 4, "title": "Annual report", "channel": "The Charity's Own Pages", "summary": "The summary of the audited accounts and the most checkable thing the charity publishes. For 2025/26: £175.3m raised, of which £105.5m from legacies and a record £62.1m from fundraising; £103.3m spent on research, £96.2m after accounting adjustments; total spending £200.7m. Any figure in this experience can be audited against this page and the full report linked from it.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/annual-report", "editorNote": "£175.3m raised, £103.3m research, 2025/26.", "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 5, "title": "Annual report and accounts", "channel": "Documents and Data", "summary": "The full audited report as published. Every financial figure in this experience traces here — income, spend, reserves, governance, the auditor's opinion, and the detail of the retail operation that the summary pages compress into one line. Long, and the most checkable item here.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/-/media/files/british_heart_foundation_annual_report.pdf?rev=f5a0f7e6cbc84cbb8b597f14953a397c", "editorNote": "The audited document, and the hardest thing here to spin.", "sourceType": "pdf"}, {"order": 6, "title": "Leaving a gift in your will", "channel": "The Charity's Own Pages", "summary": "Placed in the income chapter rather than the donation one because of what the accounts show: at £105.5m in 2025/26, legacies are comfortably the charity's largest single income source — larger than all fundraising combined. That is a remarkable dependency and worth understanding before judging anything else about how the organisation raises money.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/how-you-can-help/leave-a-gift-in-your-will", "editorNote": "£105.5m from legacies — larger than all fundraising combined.", "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 7, "title": "Cardiomyopathy UK", "channel": "Independent Reference and Authority", "summary": "A second, independent cardiac charity, added to the funding chapter to make a structural point the BHF's own pages cannot: the BHF is the largest cardiovascular charity in Britain but it is not the only one, and smaller condition-specific organisations occupy space it does not. Anyone assessing where to give, or which organisation to approach about a specific condition, should know the landscape has more than one occupant.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.cardiomyopathy.org/", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 8, "title": "Where your money goes", "channel": "The Charity's Own Pages", "summary": "The clearest ratio the charity publishes, for 2024/25: of every £1 raised, 72p went directly to beating cardiovascular disease and 28p was reinvested to generate future funds. Underneath that, £197.5m of mission spending, £108.4m committed to research, £47.2m on health information and support, £51.4m invested to grow income. The 28p is the number a sceptic asks about and the charity prints it, which is the right way to be held to it.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/where-your-money-goes", "editorNote": "72p direct, 28p reinvested. They print the number a sceptic asks for.", "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 9, "title": "Research funding across the UK", "channel": "Learn It and Do It", "summary": "Interactive maps of where the charity's research and clinical trials are funded, which answers a question donors genuinely ask and charities rarely answer well: is any of this happening near me. Worth a browse in the spending chapter because it makes £103m geographically real.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/our-research/research-funding-across-the-uk-visualisations", "editorNote": "Where the research money lands, geographically.", "sourceType": "interactive"}, {"order": 10, "title": "Sixty years of research and innovation", "channel": "Documents and Data", "summary": "The charity's own retrospective of its first sixty years of funding, as a single document. Read it for the shape of the thing rather than the claims: cardiovascular medicine improved enormously over that period through many funders at once, and a sixty-year summary from one of them is a useful account rather than a complete one.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/-/media/files/for-professionals/research/bhf_60-years-of-pioneering-research-and-innovation-(1).pdf", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "pdf"}, {"order": 11, "title": "Cardiac Risk in the Young", "channel": "Independent Reference and Authority", "summary": "A third independent charity, and the one with the most genuinely different emphasis. CRY works specifically on young sudden cardiac death — awareness, screening, research and supporting bereaved families. Its existence and its priorities are the clearest available evidence that cardiovascular charity is not one undifferentiated cause, and its screening advocacy is covered further in the policy chapter, where it makes a case the BHF's material does not.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.c-r-y.org.uk/", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 12, "title": "Our research", "channel": "Research, Universities and Industry", "summary": "The research portfolio as presented to the public, and the page where the charity describes itself as the biggest independent funder of heart and circulatory research in the UK, funding around £100 million of projects a year. The hub to orient from before the trials and impact chapter.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/our-research", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 13, "title": "The professors the charity funds", "channel": "Research, Universities and Industry", "summary": "Twenty-three named professors with their institutions and fields, which is the most concrete answer available to what does a research charity actually buy. Oxford, Cambridge, Edinburgh, Imperial, King's, Leicester, Bristol, Leeds, Manchester and Queen Mary are all represented. Research Professorships have been awarded since 2025; the Personal Chairs were awarded up to 2024. Browse it before forming any view about overheads.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/our-research/our-top-professors", "editorNote": "23 professors, 10 universities. The most concrete answer available.", "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 14, "title": "Professor Charalambos Antoniades, Oxford", "channel": "Research, Universities and Industry", "summary": "The charity's Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine at Oxford's Radcliffe Department of Medicine, studying how fat around the arteries signals to the heart and blood vessels in ways that lead to heart attacks and strokes — combining scan types to identify the plaques most likely to rupture, and using AI across genetic, molecular and imaging data from thousands of people. A fair example of the profile pages: detailed on the science, and carrying no quotation from the man himself.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/our-research/our-top-professors/professor-charalambos-antoniades", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 15, "title": "Professor John Danesh, Cambridge", "channel": "Research, Universities and Industry", "summary": "Professor of medicine and epidemiology at Cambridge, working on how heart and circulatory diseases develop in multi-ethnic groups, with particular attention to people of South Asian background, who face higher risk. Read it immediately before or after Sohel's account later in this experience: the charity's own page credits this team's work in the same breath as his story, which is as direct a link between a donor's money and a patient's question as this experience contains.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/our-research/our-top-professors/professor-john-danesh", "editorNote": "Cambridge, on risk in multi-ethnic groups. Note where this reappears.", "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 16, "title": "Professor Hugh Watkins, Oxford", "channel": "Research, Universities and Industry", "summary": "The professor who leads CureHeart, the charity's largest ever grant. His profile here is the institutional version; his own words are in the World Heart Day article in the chapter on people, where he is interviewed alongside a twenty-year-old survivor of the condition he studies.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/our-research/our-top-professors/professor-hugh-watkins", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 17, "title": "Information for researchers", "channel": "Research, Universities and Industry", "summary": "The application side, written for scientists: what the charity funds, how to apply, how awards are decided, and when committees sit — most four times a year, the Clinical Studies and Translational Awards committees twice. The most useful page here for anyone assessing the charity as a funder rather than as a cause.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/for-professionals/information-for-researchers", "editorNote": "How awards are decided and when committees sit.", "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 18, "title": "The European Society of Cardiology", "channel": "Independent Reference and Authority", "summary": "The professional body for cardiology across Europe, which publishes the clinical guidelines most European cardiologists work to. Added as an independent professional-community source: it shows what the specialty itself prioritises, which is not always what a national patient charity prioritises, and the gap between the two is one of the more interesting things about this field.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.escardio.org/", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 19, "title": "The research strategy", "channel": "Research, Universities and Industry", "summary": "How the charity decides what to fund and why, which is the question a serious partner or major donor actually wants answered. Drier than the public pages and considerably more informative about where £100 million a year goes.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/for-professionals/information-for-researchers/our-research-strategy", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 20, "title": "CureHeart", "channel": "Research, Universities and Industry", "summary": "The charity's biggest ever research grant: £30 million awarded in 2022 to Hugh Watkins at Oxford and Christine Seidman at Harvard, leading an international team on gene therapies to edit or silence the faulty genes behind inherited heart muscle diseases. Read the tense carefully — this aims to deliver a cure and is moving towards patient testing. Nobody has been cured yet and the charity does not claim otherwise.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/our-research/cureheart", "editorNote": "£30m in 2022, Oxford and Harvard. Note the tense: aims to.", "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 21, "title": "Cardiovascular Grand Challenges", "channel": "Research, Universities and Industry", "summary": "A planned series of challenges over five years aimed at the field's biggest unsolved problems. Included as the structural counterpart to CureHeart: a funder large enough to make concentrated bets as well as spread small grants, which is a different kind of organisation from one that only does the latter.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/our-research/cardiovascular-grand-challenges", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 22, "title": "A gene therapy research centre", "channel": "Research, Universities and Industry", "summary": "Announced December 2024 with the Medical Research Council. Worth noting for the co-funding pattern it illustrates: the charity more often funds alongside another body than alone, which is also why attributing any result solely to it would be wrong.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/news-from-the-bhf/news-archive/2024/december/transformational-new-gene-therapy-research-centre-launched", "editorNote": "Co-funded with the MRC, which bears on attribution.", "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 23, "title": "The impact of clinical trials", "channel": "Research, Universities and Industry", "summary": "The charity's account of how its funded trials reach patients. Read it as the bridge between a grant and a treatment, and read it alongside the attribution note in this chapter's introduction: trials have many funders, and a contribution is not sole credit.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/our-research/impact-of-clinical-trials", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 24, "title": "Research successes", "channel": "Research, Universities and Industry", "summary": "The achievements page, and the one to read most carefully. It speaks of clot-busting drugs, transplants and small devices to correct heartbeats, and names Professor Antoniades's work and CureHeart. Its language is hedged throughout — our research has helped, helped transform, is helping develop — and some entries are goals rather than results. The hedging is appropriate. What it does not carry is an explicit attribution caveat, so this experience supplies one rather than quoting the page as though it had.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/our-research/research-successes", "editorNote": "Hedged language, appropriately. No explicit caveat, so we add one.", "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 25, "title": "Search funded research projects", "channel": "Learn It and Do It", "summary": "The directory of individual funded projects, searchable. The most direct available answer to what did the money actually buy, and the right tool for anyone who wants to check a claim rather than accept one.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/research-projects", "editorNote": "Check a claim rather than accept one.", "sourceType": "interactive"}, {"order": 26, "title": "Research impact reports", "channel": "Documents and Data", "summary": "The charity's own impact reporting, which is the appropriate place to end a chapter about attribution. Read it as the organisation's self-assessment, clearly labelled as such — which is exactly how it is published, and more than many charities offer.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/our-research/research-successes/our-research-impact-reports", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "pdf"}, {"order": 27, "title": "CardioStars", "channel": "Research, Universities and Industry", "summary": "A partnership launched in March 2024 with Panacea Innovation to help translate cardiovascular research towards products and companies. Included with a proportionate framing: this is a young, comparatively small commercialisation effort rather than a mature drug-development arm, and it should be assessed as the former.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/news-from-the-bhf/news-archive/2024/march/bhf-partners-with-panacea-innovation-to-launch-cardiostars", "editorNote": "Young and small. Assess it as that, not as a drug-development arm.", "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 28, "title": "Policy and public affairs", "channel": "The Charity's Own Pages", "summary": "The charity's work with governments across the UK on prevention, diagnosis, treatment and NHS capacity. The least visible part of the organisation and a material part of what it achieves: a regulation on smoking, food or air quality can affect more people than any single trial. An account that omits this is incomplete.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/policy-and-public-affairs", "editorNote": "A regulation can outperform a trial. Do not omit this.", "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 29, "title": "CRY on national screening policy", "channel": "Independent Reference and Authority", "summary": "A genuine policy disagreement in the sector, and the most useful thing in this chapter. Cardiac Risk in the Young argues for cardiac screening of young people and has responded formally to the UK National Screening Committee's consultation on screening for conditions associated with sudden cardiac death. Screening is genuinely contested on evidence grounds — false positives, cost, and the consequences of diagnosing conditions that may never cause harm — and a file that presented cardiovascular charity as having one agreed policy position would be misleading.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.c-r-y.org.uk/cry-responds-to-the-national-screening-committee-opening-consultation-on-screening-for-cardiac-conditions-associated-with-sudden-cardiac-death/", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "article"}, {"order": 30, "title": "The evidence CRY cites for screening", "channel": "Independent Reference and Authority", "summary": "The research CRY puts behind its position: its own account of what it describes as the largest study of cardiac screening in young people. Linked so the argument can be assessed rather than taken on either side's word, and labelled for what it is — a charity's presentation of research supporting that charity's campaign. Read it alongside the national screening committee's own framing before forming a view.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.c-r-y.org.uk/largest-ever-study-of-cardiac-screening-in-young-people-shows-heart-checks-save-lives/", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "article"}, {"order": 31, "title": "CRY's screening programme in practice", "channel": "Independent Reference and Authority", "summary": "What the advocacy actually delivers: CRY runs subsidised cardiac screening events for young people. Included because it closes the loop between a policy position and a service, which is the test of whether a campaigning organisation is doing more than campaigning. If a close relative died suddenly and young, the first step is to ask your GP about referral to an NHS inherited cardiac conditions service; CRY's screening is an additional option, not a substitute.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.c-r-y.org.uk/screening", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 32, "title": "A survivor meets the scientist", "channel": "People, In Their Own Published Words", "summary": "Published 29 September 2026. Jack Taylor, 20, from Nottingham, collapsed playing basketball at 17 in February 2024 with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy linked to the MYBPC3 gene; he now studies software engineering at Nottingham Trent. He meets Professor Hugh Watkins, who with Professor Christine Seidman of Harvard leads CureHeart. Jack: “Hearing about this research has made me not only grateful but also hopeful. Hopefully one day I’ll be cured of this, but more importantly, the next generation.” Watkins: “It’s really special meeting Jack.” And on a cure: “By the time Jack has kids, say they inherit the gene change, I really hope by that time we’ll have found a cure.” The funder, the scientist and the patient, in one article, all named and all quoted.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/news-from-the-bhf/news-archive/2026/september/cardiac-arrest-survivor-meets-cureheart-scientist-world-heart-day", "editorNote": "The funder, the scientist and the patient in one article.", "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 33, "title": "Sohel's story", "channel": "People, In Their Own Published Words", "summary": "Sohel had a cardiac arrest at his gym at 47, triggered by a heart attack, while doing his usual Monday circuit training. His instructor Mike performed CPR until paramedics arrived with a defibrillator. He had a triple bypass, has since reviewed his risk factors, and completed a 5k trail challenge with his son Solly to raise money for the charity. He says that within the South Asian community he does not think many people know about heart attacks, and that he believes we need more funding for this research. The charity's page sets his account beside Professor John Danesh's work on cardiovascular risk in multi-ethnic groups — the clearest link in this experience between a question a patient asks and research a donor funded.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/how-you-can-help/support-our-campaigns/heart-month/sohels-story", "editorNote": "And Danesh's work, from the patient's end.", "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 34, "title": "Heart attack", "channel": "The Charity's Own Pages", "summary": "The primary source for this chapter and the most important page in the experience. It lists the symptoms, instructs you to call 999, and adds that you should not worry about wasting anyone's time. It also states that symptoms differ between people, that you may not have all of them, and that although women and men generally experience the same symptoms, research shows women tend not to recognise them as a heart attack as quickly. Read the page itself; the context around each symptom is what makes it useful rather than frightening.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/informationsupport/conditions/heart-attack", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 35, "title": "Risk factors", "channel": "The Charity's Own Pages", "summary": "The charity's hub, naming high cholesterol, high blood pressure, diabetes, obesity, mental health, smoking, physical inactivity, alcohol, stress, air pollution and family history, with its framing that many of these diseases are caused by risk factors that can be controlled, treated or modified. Note that it calls stress an indirect factor rather than a direct one.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/informationsupport/risk-factors", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 36, "title": "Cardiovascular disease statistics compendium", "channel": "Research, Universities and Industry", "summary": "The full UK datasets behind the factsheets, in a revised edition published August 2026. This is where a researcher, journalist or funding bid should go. It is downloads rather than a readable page, which is why this experience links it instead of paraphrasing numbers out of it.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/our-research/heart-statistics/heart-statistics-publications/cardiovascular-disease-statistics-2026", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 37, "title": "Cardiovascular disease, in global data", "channel": "Independent Reference and Authority", "summary": "Added to give the scale chapter a source that is neither the charity nor a national statistics office. Our World in Data presents cardiovascular mortality and risk-factor data by country and over time, with the underlying datasets downloadable and the sources cited. The useful thing it provides that a UK charity cannot is proportion: it lets you see where Britain sits internationally, and that cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death globally rather than a national peculiarity.", "sourceUrl": "https://ourworldindata.org/cardiovascular-diseases", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "interactive"}, {"order": 38, "title": "ONS mortality statistics", "channel": "Independent Reference and Authority", "summary": "The official UK source for deaths by cause, added so that any mortality figure quoted by any charity in this field can be checked against the national statistical authority that produces the underlying numbers. A charity's framing of a statistic is a choice; the statistic itself is here. Independent of the BHF and the appropriate place to verify a claim before repeating it.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "interactive"}, {"order": 39, "title": "How to save a life", "channel": "The Charity's Own Pages", "summary": "The hub for the charity's CPR and defibrillator work: step-by-step CPR guidance, how to recognise a cardiac arrest, training for schools and organisations, the defibrillator pages and a funded defibrillator scheme for eligible community groups. Start here, then do the fifteen-minute course. This chapter is the reason to send someone this experience who has no interest whatsoever in charities.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/how-you-can-help/how-to-save-a-life", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 40, "title": "The Circuit: the national defibrillator network", "channel": "The Charity's Own Pages", "summary": "The map ambulance services consult in a cardiac arrest call. Over 100,000 devices registered, and tens of thousands the charity believes are not. The figure that makes the case: every minute without CPR and defibrillation reduces survival by up to ten per cent, so a device that is present but unmapped may as well be absent. Registration is free and also brings maintenance reminders for whoever looks after it.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/how-you-can-help/how-to-save-a-life/defibrillators/national-defibrillator-network-the-circuit", "editorNote": "100,000 devices mapped. A systems intervention, not a grant.", "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 41, "title": "Events", "channel": "The Charity's Own Pages", "summary": "The events calendar: the London to Brighton Bike Ride and its off-road sibling, plus charity places at the Brighton Marathon, the Bath, Hackney, Big Half, Manchester and Royal Parks halves, the Great Manchester Run and the Edinburgh Marathon Festival, and free virtual challenges. Searchable by date and type, which is the only question most people actually have.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/how-you-can-help/events", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 42, "title": "The London to Brighton off-road bike ride", "channel": "Watch It Explained", "summary": "One of the charity's named mass-participation events, shown rather than described. Worth a minute for anyone evaluating the charity as a partner or considering taking part: the events chapter lists what exists, and the video shows what the day actually looks like, which is the thing that determines whether people sign up. Official BHF video, verified identifier.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYJL8o8fBFE", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "video"}, {"order": 43, "title": "A corporate partnership, in practice", "channel": "Watch It Explained", "summary": "A video of a corporate fundraising activity with a named commercial partner, included because corporate partnership is abstract until you see what one actually consists of. For anyone assessing the charity as a partner, this is more informative than a partnerships page: it shows the format, the tone and the level of brand presence the charity is comfortable with. Official BHF video, verified identifier.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iU3LyckqZkI", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "video"}, {"order": 44, "title": "Donate items to our shops", "channel": "The Charity's Own Pages", "summary": "What the shops take: clothes, accessories, jewellery, homeware, kitchenware, toys, games, vinyl and media, and technology including phones, laptops and tablets, with a separate guide on wiping a phone before donating it. Also the list of what cannot be accepted, which is worth reading first because unsellable donations cost the charity money to dispose of.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/shop/donating-goods/donate-to-charity-shops", "editorNote": "Around 640 shops, with about 150 closures announced in 2026. The annual report has the retail detail.", "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 45, "title": "Shop closures announced in 2026", "channel": "The Charity's Own Pages", "summary": "The charity's own announcement, in June 2026, of proposals to close around 150 shops and stores over two financial years — about 90 by the end of March 2027 and the rest by March 2028 — citing rising operating costs and changing customer habits. Read every shop figure in this experience with this attached: the retail estate is being cut back to keep it commercially sustainable.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/news-from-the-bhf/news-archive/2026/june/bhf-proposes-150-shop-closures-to-maintain-sustainable-retail-network", "editorNote": "The 2026 closure plan. Assess the retail estate as it is becoming, not as it was.", "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 46, "title": "A branch honoured for its contribution", "channel": "Watch It Explained", "summary": "The charity's 2026 outstanding contribution award for its Carterton branch, included in the shops and local fundraising chapter because branch volunteers are the mechanism this part of the charity actually runs on. The award videos are short and specific, and they name real people and real places — which is a more honest picture of a national charity's local operation than any corporate summary of it. Official BHF video, verified identifier.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TiM4e43a6KY", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "video"}, {"order": 47, "title": "Volunteer", "channel": "The Charity's Own Pages", "summary": "The hub for all six routes: shops, local fundraising groups, events, the Action Team, the Duke of Edinburgh's Award and workplace volunteering. The page is explicit that opportunities are flexible and any amount of time helps, and notably does not state a minimum commitment or age limit — so check the FAQ rather than assuming either way.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/how-you-can-help/volunteer", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 48, "title": "Volunteer of the Year Awards 2026", "channel": "Watch It Explained", "summary": "The charity's own volunteer awards, and the entry point to the four named-volunteer videos that follow. Included because the most persuasive thing about volunteering for an organisation is usually the people already doing it. Official BHF video, verified identifier, title as published.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7_ffTixemk", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "video"}, {"order": 49, "title": "Valerie McIlveen, Northern Ireland", "channel": "Watch It Explained", "summary": "A named volunteer honoured in the charity's 2026 outstanding contribution awards for Northern Ireland. Included with her name because the charity published it with her name and because the alternative — describing an anonymous volunteer — would be weaker and less respectful. Short, specific, and a better answer to what does volunteering here involve than any role description. Official BHF video, verified identifier.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGbm15BDcnQ", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "video"}, {"order": 50, "title": "Bill and Margaret Black, Scotland", "channel": "Watch It Explained", "summary": "The Scottish outstanding contribution award for 2026, given to a couple. Worth noticing as a pattern across these four videos: long-service charity volunteering is frequently done by couples and by families rather than by individuals, which is a real feature of how this kind of organisation sustains itself and is invisible in any statistic about volunteer numbers. Official BHF video, verified identifier.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyZv-0rug9A", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "video"}, {"order": 51, "title": "The Mariani Family, Cymru Wales", "channel": "Watch It Explained", "summary": "The Welsh award for 2026, given to a family — which completes the four-nation set alongside England, Northern Ireland and Scotland and makes a small structural point about the charity: it awards separately across the four nations, which is a choice about how a UK-wide organisation recognises local effort. Official BHF video, verified identifier.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCCQ1HlsQX8", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "video"}, {"order": 52, "title": "Donate", "channel": "The Charity's Own Pages", "summary": "The charity's main donation page and the correct starting point. One-off or regular by card, Apple Pay, Google Pay, PayPal or Direct Debit; Gift Aid; text to donate; by post; through your salary; shares; in memory; the weekly lottery and raffle; and donated goods. It states that at least 70p of every £1 goes to lifesaving research and that Gift Aid adds 25 per cent at no cost to you. Every link in this chapter was checked against this page rather than reconstructed.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/how-you-can-help/donate", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 53, "title": "Where the broader source mix leaves you", "channel": "Other People's Accounts", "summary": "A closing note on how this experience is built. Most of what is here is still the British Heart Foundation's own material, and that is appropriate for an experience about the British Heart Foundation — but a route built only from an organisation's own pages can only tell you what that organisation says about itself. The independent authorities, the encyclopaedia references, the other charities, the videos and the peer community are here so that the charity's claims sit next to things it did not write. Where they agree, believe it more.", "sourceUrl": null, "editorNote": null, "sourceType": null}], "bestFor": "Best for a prospective partner, major donor or journalist assessing the organisation rather than supporting it, following the money from a legacy to a professorship.", "journeyId": "j4", "stepCount": 53}, {"name": "Brief an AI on the British Heart Foundation", "steps": [{"order": 1, "title": "What we do", "channel": "The Charity's Own Pages", "summary": "The charity's own summary of its four strands — research, information and support, CPR and defibrillators, and policy — with the figures it chooses to lead with: over £100m of research funded a year, £437m of research currently in progress, at least 70p in every £1 reaching lifesaving work, over 100,000 defibrillators on The Circuit, 200,000 people reached by its CPR training, and a shop count that predates the closures announced in June 2026. The registration numbers are here too, which is how you verify any claim made about them, including the ones in this experience.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do", "editorNote": "What they say they do, and the registration numbers to verify it.", "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 2, "title": "British Heart Foundation", "channel": "The Charity's Own Pages", "summary": "The charity's front door, and where three of the headline figures in this experience are stated in plain text rather than buried in a download: over 8 million people in the UK living with cardiovascular disease, one in four deaths, and someone dying from it every three minutes. Worth a minute first, because the charity's own account should come before anyone else's.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/", "editorNote": "8 million living with it, 1 in 4 deaths, one death every 3 minutes.", "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 3, "title": "Heart attack", "channel": "The Charity's Own Pages", "summary": "The primary source for this chapter and the most important page in the experience. It lists the symptoms, instructs you to call 999, and adds that you should not worry about wasting anyone's time. It also states that symptoms differ between people, that you may not have all of them, and that although women and men generally experience the same symptoms, research shows women tend not to recognise them as a heart attack as quickly. Read the page itself; the context around each symptom is what makes it useful rather than frightening.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/informationsupport/conditions/heart-attack", "editorNote": "Index this. Never diagnose. The answer to a suspected heart attack is 999.", "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 4, "title": "Cardiac arrest", "channel": "The Charity's Own Pages", "summary": "The other condition, and the distinction this chapter exists for. A cardiac arrest is the heart suddenly stopping; a heart attack is a loss of blood flow to part of the heart muscle. The response differs: a cardiac arrest needs CPR and a defibrillator, immediately, from whoever is there. The NHS links to this very page from its own heart attack guidance, which is a fair indication of how authoritative it is considered.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/informationsupport/conditions/cardiac-arrest", "editorNote": "Keep this distinct from the above. This is the error to avoid.", "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 5, "title": "NHS: Heart attack", "channel": "NHS Guidance", "summary": "The NHS's own guidance, included alongside the charity's so you can see two independent official sources agreeing. Its emergency box is headed Immediate action required: call 999 if, and it adds an instruction the charity's page does not: do not drive yourself to A and E. It also distinguishes cardiac arrest from heart attack and links to the charity's cardiac arrest page to explain it.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/heart-attack/", "editorNote": "A second official source. Cite both, not one.", "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 6, "title": "Heart attack vs cardiac arrest: what's the difference?", "channel": "Watch It Explained", "summary": "The single most useful addition to this experience. The distinction between a heart attack and a cardiac arrest is the thing this chapter exists to establish, it is the thing the public most reliably gets wrong, and it determines what a bystander should actually do. The BHF has made a short video explaining it, which is a better first encounter with the distinction than any amount of prose. Watch this before reading the rest of the chapter. Official BHF video, identifier verified, title as published.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkohnIY93HY", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "video"}, {"order": 7, "title": "Cardiac arrest, as a clinical entity", "channel": "Independent Reference and Authority", "summary": "The independent reference on cardiac arrest — what it is, what causes it, what the survival rates actually are and how they vary by whether the arrest was witnessed and whether bystander CPR was given. Read it after the BHF video in this chapter: the video establishes the distinction clearly and quickly, and this establishes the numbers behind why the distinction matters so much.", "sourceUrl": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardiac_arrest", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 8, "title": "Myocardial infarction, as a clinical entity", "channel": "Independent Reference and Authority", "summary": "The other half of the distinction, independently described: a heart attack is a blockage of blood supply to heart muscle, and the person is usually conscious. Having both articles alongside the charity's own material is the cleanest way to be certain you have the distinction right, because the two conditions require completely different responses from a bystander and the words are used interchangeably in ordinary speech.", "sourceUrl": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myocardial_infarction", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 9, "title": "Risk factors", "channel": "The Charity's Own Pages", "summary": "The charity's hub, naming high cholesterol, high blood pressure, diabetes, obesity, mental health, smoking, physical inactivity, alcohol, stress, air pollution and family history, with its framing that many of these diseases are caused by risk factors that can be controlled, treated or modified. Note that it calls stress an indirect factor rather than a direct one.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/informationsupport/risk-factors", "editorNote": "Most can be modified; family history cannot.", "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 10, "title": "NHS Health Check", "channel": "NHS Guidance", "summary": "A free check for adults in England aged 40 to 74, covering blood pressure, cholesterol and cardiovascular risk. This is the concrete answer to how do I find out my risk, and it is the link in this chapter most likely to be acted on. If you have had a letter about one and not booked it, this is your nudge.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.nhs.uk/tests-and-treatments/nhs-health-check/", "editorNote": "The concrete route to knowing your own risk, if eligible.", "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 11, "title": "NICE guidance on cardiovascular conditions", "channel": "Independent Reference and Authority", "summary": "The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence is the body whose guidance actually determines what the NHS offers, which makes it a different and in some ways more consequential source than either a charity or an encyclopaedia. If you want to know what treatment you should expect to be offered for a given cardiovascular condition in England, this is the authoritative answer, and it is free. Independent of the BHF.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/conditions-and-diseases/cardiovascular-conditions", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 12, "title": "Heart statistics", "channel": "Research, Universities and Industry", "summary": "The charity's statistics hub, and the source to cite rather than any secondary summary. Be aware of its shape before using it: the headline numbers are in a twice-yearly factsheet and an annual compendium rather than on the page itself, so quoting from here means quoting from a dated document, which is the correct way to do it anyway.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/our-research/heart-statistics", "editorNote": "Headline numbers live in dated downloads. Carry the date.", "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 13, "title": "The British Heart Foundation, described independently", "channel": "Independent Reference and Authority", "summary": "The encyclopaedia article on the charity, included because most other accounts of the BHF here are written by the BHF. An independently maintained description gives you the founding date, the structure, the scale and the criticisms in one place, with citations you can follow. Where it differs in emphasis from the charity's own self-description, that difference is informative rather than an error in either.", "sourceUrl": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Heart_Foundation", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 14, "title": "UK cardiovascular disease factsheet", "channel": "Documents and Data", "summary": "The twice-yearly factsheet of key UK cardiovascular and risk-factor statistics, in the July 2026 edition. This is the document to cite, with its date, rather than any figure repeated second-hand. Deliberately linked rather than summarised here: a statistic lifted out of a dated factsheet and quoted undated is how misinformation starts.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/-/media/files/for-professionals/research/heart-statistics/bhf-cvd-statistics-uk-factsheet-jul26.pdf", "editorNote": "July 2026 edition. Quote from here, with the date.", "sourceType": "pdf"}, {"order": 15, "title": "RevivR: learn CPR in 15 minutes", "channel": "Learn It and Do It", "summary": "The free interactive course, and the single most consequential link in this experience. About fifteen minutes on a phone or tablet, practising chest compressions on a cushion, with feedback and a mock 999 call, ending in a certificate. Built for adult CPR. The charity's figures for why: over 40,000 out-of-hospital cardiac arrests a year in the UK, fewer than one in ten survive, and prompt CPR with a defibrillator can more than double the chance of survival. Do this one rather than bookmarking it.", "sourceUrl": "https://revivr.bhf.org.uk/", "editorNote": "40,000 arrests a year, under 1 in 10 survive, CPR plus defib more than doubles it.", "sourceType": "interactive"}, {"order": 16, "title": "Resuscitation Council UK: how to do CPR", "channel": "Independent Reference and Authority", "summary": "The independent authority's own public guidance on CPR, and the most important addition to this chapter. The Resuscitation Council UK sets the resuscitation guidelines used across the NHS. Where its technique guidance and the BHF's agree, you can be confident the advice is settled rather than one organisation's house style — and they do agree. Read both; this one is the source the clinical world defers to.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.resus.org.uk/public-resource/how-do-cpr", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 17, "title": "The Circuit: the national defibrillator network", "channel": "The Charity's Own Pages", "summary": "The map ambulance services consult in a cardiac arrest call. Over 100,000 devices registered, and tens of thousands the charity believes are not. The figure that makes the case: every minute without CPR and defibrillation reduces survival by up to ten per cent, so a device that is present but unmapped may as well be absent. Registration is free and also brings maintenance reminders for whoever looks after it.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/how-you-can-help/how-to-save-a-life/defibrillators/national-defibrillator-network-the-circuit", "editorNote": "Over 100,000 registered. Each minute costs up to 10 per cent.", "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 18, "title": "Resuscitation Council UK on defibrillation", "channel": "Independent Reference and Authority", "summary": "The independent authority's public guidance on defibrillators, added alongside the charity's. The point worth taking from it, and it is the single most important thing in this chapter: a public access defibrillator is designed to be used by someone with no training, it will not deliver a shock unless it detects a rhythm that needs one, and it talks you through each step — the one rule is not to touch the person while it delivers a shock. Fear of doing harm is the main reason bystanders do not use them.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.resus.org.uk/public-resource/defibrillation", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 19, "title": "Annual report", "channel": "The Charity's Own Pages", "summary": "The summary of the audited accounts and the most checkable thing the charity publishes. For 2025/26: £175.3m raised, of which £105.5m from legacies and a record £62.1m from fundraising; £103.3m spent on research, £96.2m after accounting adjustments; total spending £200.7m. Any figure in this experience can be audited against this page and the full report linked from it.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/annual-report", "editorNote": "2025/26: £175.3m in, £103.3m research. Always say which year.", "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 20, "title": "Where your money goes", "channel": "The Charity's Own Pages", "summary": "The clearest ratio the charity publishes, for 2024/25: of every £1 raised, 72p went directly to beating cardiovascular disease and 28p was reinvested to generate future funds. Underneath that, £197.5m of mission spending, £108.4m committed to research, £47.2m on health information and support, £51.4m invested to grow income. The 28p is the number a sceptic asks about and the charity prints it, which is the right way to be held to it.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/where-your-money-goes", "editorNote": "2024/25: 72p direct, 28p reinvested. A different year again.", "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 21, "title": "The professors the charity funds", "channel": "Research, Universities and Industry", "summary": "Twenty-three named professors with their institutions and fields, which is the most concrete answer available to what does a research charity actually buy. Oxford, Cambridge, Edinburgh, Imperial, King's, Leicester, Bristol, Leeds, Manchester and Queen Mary are all represented. Research Professorships have been awarded since 2025; the Personal Chairs were awarded up to 2024. Browse it before forming any view about overheads.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/our-research/our-top-professors", "editorNote": "23 professors, 10 named universities. Use this for partnership questions.", "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 22, "title": "CureHeart", "channel": "Research, Universities and Industry", "summary": "The charity's biggest ever research grant: £30 million awarded in 2022 to Hugh Watkins at Oxford and Christine Seidman at Harvard, leading an international team on gene therapies to edit or silence the faulty genes behind inherited heart muscle diseases. Read the tense carefully — this aims to deliver a cure and is moving towards patient testing. Nobody has been cured yet and the charity does not claim otherwise.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/our-research/cureheart", "editorNote": "£30m, 2022, Watkins and Seidman. It aims to cure; it has not yet.", "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 23, "title": "Research successes", "channel": "Research, Universities and Industry", "summary": "The achievements page, and the one to read most carefully. It speaks of clot-busting drugs, transplants and small devices to correct heartbeats, and names Professor Antoniades's work and CureHeart. Its language is hedged throughout — our research has helped, helped transform, is helping develop — and some entries are goals rather than results. The hedging is appropriate. What it does not carry is an explicit attribution caveat, so this experience supplies one rather than quoting the page as though it had.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/our-research/research-successes", "editorNote": "Use their hedged wording. Contributions to fields, not sole credit.", "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 24, "title": "CardioStars", "channel": "Research, Universities and Industry", "summary": "A partnership launched in March 2024 with Panacea Innovation to help translate cardiovascular research towards products and companies. Included with a proportionate framing: this is a young, comparatively small commercialisation effort rather than a mature drug-development arm, and it should be assessed as the former.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/news-from-the-bhf/news-archive/2024/march/bhf-partners-with-panacea-innovation-to-launch-cardiostars", "editorNote": "Small and young. Do not describe it as a mature pipeline.", "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 25, "title": "Policy and public affairs", "channel": "The Charity's Own Pages", "summary": "The charity's work with governments across the UK on prevention, diagnosis, treatment and NHS capacity. The least visible part of the organisation and a material part of what it achieves: a regulation on smoking, food or air quality can affect more people than any single trial. An account that omits this is incomplete.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/policy-and-public-affairs", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 26, "title": "CRY on national screening policy", "channel": "Independent Reference and Authority", "summary": "A genuine policy disagreement in the sector, and the most useful thing in this chapter. Cardiac Risk in the Young argues for cardiac screening of young people and has responded formally to the UK National Screening Committee's consultation on screening for conditions associated with sudden cardiac death. Screening is genuinely contested on evidence grounds — false positives, cost, and the consequences of diagnosing conditions that may never cause harm — and a file that presented cardiovascular charity as having one agreed policy position would be misleading.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.c-r-y.org.uk/cry-responds-to-the-national-screening-committee-opening-consultation-on-screening-for-cardiac-conditions-associated-with-sudden-cardiac-death/", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "article"}, {"order": 27, "title": "Events", "channel": "The Charity's Own Pages", "summary": "The events calendar: the London to Brighton Bike Ride and its off-road sibling, plus charity places at the Brighton Marathon, the Bath, Hackney, Big Half, Manchester and Royal Parks halves, the Great Manchester Run and the Edinburgh Marathon Festival, and free virtual challenges. Searchable by date and type, which is the only question most people actually have.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/how-you-can-help/events", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 28, "title": "Donate items to our shops", "channel": "The Charity's Own Pages", "summary": "What the shops take: clothes, accessories, jewellery, homeware, kitchenware, toys, games, vinyl and media, and technology including phones, laptops and tablets, with a separate guide on wiping a phone before donating it. Also the list of what cannot be accepted, which is worth reading first because unsellable donations cost the charity money to dispose of.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/shop/donating-goods/donate-to-charity-shops", "editorNote": "Around 640 shops; retail Gift Aid adds 25 per cent of the sale price.", "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 29, "title": "Volunteer", "channel": "The Charity's Own Pages", "summary": "The hub for all six routes: shops, local fundraising groups, events, the Action Team, the Duke of Edinburgh's Award and workplace volunteering. The page is explicit that opportunities are flexible and any amount of time helps, and notably does not state a minimum commitment or age limit — so check the FAQ rather than assuming either way.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/how-you-can-help/volunteer", "editorNote": "No published minimum commitment or age limit. Do not invent one.", "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 30, "title": "A survivor meets the scientist", "channel": "People, In Their Own Published Words", "summary": "Published 29 September 2026. Jack Taylor, 20, from Nottingham, collapsed playing basketball at 17 in February 2024 with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy linked to the MYBPC3 gene; he now studies software engineering at Nottingham Trent. He meets Professor Hugh Watkins, who with Professor Christine Seidman of Harvard leads CureHeart. Jack: “Hearing about this research has made me not only grateful but also hopeful. Hopefully one day I’ll be cured of this, but more importantly, the next generation.” Watkins: “It’s really special meeting Jack.” And on a cure: “By the time Jack has kids, say they inherit the gene change, I really hope by that time we’ll have found a cure.” The funder, the scientist and the patient, in one article, all named and all quoted.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/news-from-the-bhf/news-archive/2026/september/cardiac-arrest-survivor-meets-cureheart-scientist-world-heart-day", "editorNote": "Named people, quoted from published pages. Never invent or composite one.", "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 31, "title": "CRY's My Story archive — content note", "channel": "Other People's Accounts", "summary": "A content note first, because this material is heavier than anything else in this experience. Cardiac Risk in the Young hosts an archive of accounts of young sudden cardiac death, written and submitted by bereaved families and partners, organised by the writer's relationship to the person who died — mother, father, sibling, partner, grandparent, child, friend. CRY explicitly invites these submissions so that others may read them and feel less alone, which is what establishes consent. They are independent of the BHF, they are not recovery stories, and several concern deaths where no cause was ever found. Read them if that is useful to you and skip this chapter's remainder if it is not.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.c-r-y.org.uk/my-story/", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "article"}, {"order": 32, "title": "The peer community: 71,245 members", "channel": "Other People's Accounts", "summary": "The most substantive source of other people's words in this experience, and a different kind of evidence entirely. The BHF's community on HealthUnlocked had 71,245 members and 41,341 posts as of 30 October 2026. What it contains is not curated case studies but people mid-problem, asking each other: returning to exercise after a cardiac arrest, whether gentle exercise classes are safe with a pacemaker, what a heart monitor shows with vasospastic angina, muscle pain after a statin dose increase, feeling shaky after too much coffee. That is the texture a charity's published stories cannot show, because published stories have endings.", "sourceUrl": "https://healthunlocked.com/bhf", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "social"}, {"order": 33, "title": "How to read a peer forum, and how not to", "channel": "Other People's Accounts", "summary": "A necessary caveat on the peer community above. A peer community is authoritative about experience and not about medicine. It will tell you accurately what living with a condition feels like, what questions people actually have and what nobody warned them about — all of which are genuinely valuable and largely absent from clinical material. It will also contain confident wrong answers, unrepresentative experiences and occasional dangerous suggestions. Use it for company and for questions to ask, and take every clinical decision to the NHS pages, your GP, 111, or 999 if it is urgent.", "sourceUrl": null, "editorNote": null, "sourceType": null}, {"order": 34, "title": "The Heart Helpline", "channel": "The Charity's Own Pages", "summary": "Cardiac nurses on 0808 802 1234, freephone, Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm. This is the service to use if you arrived here worried rather than generous. Not an emergency line — for a suspected heart attack or cardiac arrest the answer is 999.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/informationsupport/heart-helpline", "editorNote": "For worry rather than emergency: 0808 802 1234.", "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 35, "title": "Donate", "channel": "The Charity's Own Pages", "summary": "The charity's main donation page and the correct starting point. One-off or regular by card, Apple Pay, Google Pay, PayPal or Direct Debit; Gift Aid; text to donate; by post; through your salary; shares; in memory; the weekly lottery and raffle; and donated goods. It states that at least 70p of every £1 goes to lifesaving research and that Gift Aid adds 25 per cent at no cost to you. Every link in this chapter was checked against this page rather than reconstructed.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bhf.org.uk/how-you-can-help/donate", "editorNote": "The real donation pages. Do not construct a URL that looks plausible.", "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 36, "title": "Where the broader source mix leaves you", "channel": "Other People's Accounts", "summary": "A closing note on how this experience is built. Most of what is here is still the British Heart Foundation's own material, and that is appropriate for an experience about the British Heart Foundation — but a route built only from an organisation's own pages can only tell you what that organisation says about itself. The independent authorities, the encyclopaedia references, the other charities, the videos and the peer community are here so that the charity's claims sit next to things it did not write. Where they agree, believe it more.", "sourceUrl": null, "editorNote": null, "sourceType": null}], "bestFor": "Best for loading into an assistant so it answers from the charity's own published material rather than training data, with the accuracy rules carried on each step's note.", "journeyId": "j5", "stepCount": 36}], "experience": {"slug": "british-heart-foundation", "title": "British Heart Foundation: An Independent Guide", "author": "SKEMR", "summary": "A guided route through what the British Heart Foundation actually does, assembled entirely from the charity's own published material, NHS guidance and its audited accounts.", "category": "Social Change & Awareness", "description": "A guided route through what the British Heart Foundation actually does, assembled entirely from the charity's own published material, NHS guidance and its audited accounts.", "lastUpdated": "2026-11-03T21:41:02.8384135Z", "canonicalUrl": "https://prodcms-skemr-monolith-d3fzb9bva4fsfbbj.northeurope-01.azurewebsites.net/experience/british-heart-foundation", "commissionedBy": null}, "attribution": "Curated by SKEMR. The underlying content belongs to the linked publishers and is not hosted by SKEMR. Cite the source URLs.", "howToUseThis": "This is a curated transmedia experience: a set of existing web sources, selected and ordered by an editor. Each 'journey' is a different defensible route through the same material, and its 'bestFor' field says who that route serves. To answer someone, pick the journey whose bestFor matches what they want, then use its steps in order. Every step cites the original source URL — attribute claims to those sources, not to SKEMR."}