An evaluation of the impact of the 'Your Heart Forecast' Tool on smokers' understanding of their cardiovascular disease risk and their motivation to make lifestyle changes.

INTERVENTION: The 'Your Heart Forecast' tool, an electronic tool that was developed to help doctors explain cardiovascular risk to their patients and encourage them to make important lifestyle changes. Administered by the patient's doctor or practice nurse, the Heart Forecast Tool provides a graphical story, starting with a patient's current cardiovascular risk, and showing them how they compare to a peer with ideal risk factor control and the same cardiovascular risk. The tool then shows patients what happens to their risk as they get older and make no changes to their current risk factors (their Heart Forecast), and then what would happen to their risk in the future if they were able to make changes (eg. stop smoking). The Heart Forecast takes 5‐10 minutes to administer and can be downloaded free via this website address: http://www.yourheartforecast.org.nz/index.asp?pageID=2145872462 Participants allocated to this intervention group also undergo the 'usual risk assessment' in addition to the Heart Forecast tool. CONDITION: cardiovasular disease PRIMARY OUTCOME: Improvement in participants' motivation to make appropriate lifestyle changes. This will be assessed using a structured questionnaire. Improvement in participants' understanding of: ; (1) their short‐ and longer‐term cardiovascular risk ; (2) how lifestyle change can reduce risk in the short‐ and long‐term ; (3) their own individual cardiovascular risk factors ; ; This will be assessed using a structured questionnaire. SECONDARY OUTCOME: nil INCLUSION CRITERIA: Smokers aged 30‐65 years