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Article History

Received: 1 June 2018

Accepted: 13 February 2019

First Online: 21 February 2019

Ethics approval and consent to participate

: Ethical approval was received from the NHS National Research Ethics Service Committee East of England – Cambridge (ref 15/EE/0340) on 27/05/2015. This approval included to secure practice-level consent in the form of a letter from Practice Managers and a 3rd Party Data Sharing Agreement. Separate informed consent was not necessary for individuals invited for a Health Check as: 1. These individuals would have received a Health Check invitation by letter or telephone invitation within the study period regardless; 2. The study involved practices inviting patients for an NHS Health Check using one of the two methods that they already employed (i.e., letter or telephone call); 3. Individuals were identified through routine eligibility searches, with no additional inclusions or exclusions; 4. The only change to practice processes was the random allocation to a specific invitation method and the use, in the personalised letter group, of a letter with different wording; 5. Practices routinely collected and reported data for Public Health quarterly monitoring of invitations, attendance, etc.; 6. For those recorded as non-attenders in the study, practices were free to follow up through other means, so patients would not be disadvantaged; 7. All data provided to the research team for analysis was anonymised (no patient identifiable data were shared).

: Not applicable.

: The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

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