Act FAST
Also: Stroke: Act F.A.S.T.
“Act F.A.S.T.”
Department of Health stroke awareness campaign in England (from 2009, in repeated waves) showing a stroke 'burning' through the brain and teaching FAST: Face, Arms, Speech, Time to call 999.
- Years
- 2009–now
- Country
- United Kingdom
- Topic
- CardiovascularStroke
- Asks people to
- RecognizeSeek help
- Strategy
- Coined termFear appealSimple instruction
- Channel
- PrintTV
- Audience
- Adults
Evidence
ExperimentalMixed
Randomized postal survey in Newcastle upon Tyne, 2012 (Dombrowski 2015): people sent the Act FAST leaflet recalled the campaign (76% vs 68%) and more FAST elements, but recognized and responded to stroke scenarios no better than controls. Population studies of the campaign as it aired point the other way: an interrupted time series for England 2007-2011 found emergency stroke admissions rose by about 505 a month after phase one (Flynn 2014), and in the Oxford Vascular Study patients with major stroke were twice as likely to call emergency services after FAST (OR 2.18) and median delay fell from 53 to 31 minutes, though not for TIA or minor stroke (Wolters 2015).
Sponsor (who paid)
- Department of Health (England) / Public Health England Foreign government, funder
Credits (who made it)
Not recorded yet.
Related campaigns
Sources
- Dombrowski SU et al. The stroke 'Act FAST' campaign: remembered but not understood?. Int J Stroke 2015;10(3):324-30 evaluation · 2015 · DOI 10.1111/ijs.12353 · PMID 25130981
- Morrow A et al. Can people apply 'FAST' when it really matters? A qualitative study guided by the common sense self-regulation model. BMC Public Health 2019;19(1):643 evaluation · 2019 · DOI 10.1186/s12889-019-7032-6 · PMID 31138193
- Flynn D et al. A time series evaluation of the FAST National Stroke Awareness Campaign in England. PLoS One 2014 evaluation · 2014 · DOI 10.1371/journal.pone.0104289 · PMID 25119714
- Wolters FJ et al. Sustained impact of UK FAST-test public education on response to stroke: a population-based time-series study. Int J Stroke 2015 evaluation · 2015 · DOI 10.1111/ijs.12484 · PMID 25854424
- Wolters FJ et al. Medical Attention Seeking After Transient Ischemic Attack and Minor Stroke Before and After the UK Face, Arm, Speech, Time (FAST) Public Education Campaign: Results From the Oxford Vascular Study. JAMA Neurol 2018 evaluation · 2018 · DOI 10.1001/jamaneurol.2018.1603 · PMID 29971433
Research notes
Created 2026-10-22 by literature mining (PubMed/OpenAlex); evidence level, outcome and findings are paraphrased from the evaluation abstracts, full texts not read. No credits: no page naming an agency was checked. Launch year 2009 and creative description from secondary memory; the trial tests the leaflet, not the TV campaign. Evidence updated 2026-10-22: outcome null -> mixed. The randomized trial tests the leaflet, not the TV campaign, and found no gain in recognition; time-series studies of the campaign as it ran (Flynn 2014, Wolters 2015) found more emergency admissions and faster help-seeking for major stroke. Level left at experimental (the leaflet RCT); the campaign itself is evaluated only with time series.
Record cases/uk-act-fast.json, updated 2026-10-23· Link to this campaign