Lay summary
Multimorbidity (MM), having two or more long-term conditions, is significantly more common among Māori, Pacific, deprived populations and older people. It typically co-occurs with high cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk, yet MM is largely ignored in CVD risk assessment and management guidelines due to a lack of evidence of its impact on CVD risk and life expectancy. Current disease-oriented approaches in healthcare fragment the management of MM and CVD risk, leading to potential harms from over- or under-treatment. In collaboration with NZ’s largest Primary Health Organisation, we will link anonymised electronic health records to national health datasets on 600,000+ patients. We will integrate University of Auckland research expertise on CVD risk prediction and University of Otago expertise on MM to understand MM in the context of CVD risk and life expectancy and derive new integrated CVD risk equations. The equity-focussed outputs will directly inform care in routine general practice.