Effectively tackling race inequalities in health and social care

The NHS Race and Health Observatory has commissioned further work into neonatal screening assessments which effectively identify jaundice in Black, Asian and ethnic minority babies.

Listen in to Professor Habib Naqvi, Chief Executive of the NHS Race and Health Observatory and Dr Rohan Mehra, Royal College of Physicians clinical education fellow, (Infectious diseases/microbiology SPR).

As the UK prepares for a pivotal general election on 4 July, the NHS Race and Health Observatory has unveiled its manifesto proposal for the next government.

In January 2024, the NHS Race and Health Observatory launched a landmark pilot Learning and Action Network (LAN) to address stark disparities in maternal, perinatal and neonatal health outcomes.

The Covid-19 pandemic has resulted in a large fall in hospital activity such as consultations, scans, tests and operations across England leading to a huge backlog in routine hospital care with an estimated seven million patients waiting to begin hospital treatment. The report outlines how people from Asian groups, in particular, experienced a much larger fall in planned hospital care during the pandemic than people from White, Black or Mixed ethnic groups.

This report, produced in partnership with the University of Leicester, the University of Nottingham, and UCL, presents the first six-monthly update on the REACH-OUT programme, outlining the rationale and methodology that will drive the work. 

Responding to the latest National Child Mortality Database figures published on 9 November, Dr Habib Naqvi, CEO of the NHS Race and Health Observatory said:

Black, Asian and ethnic minority communities are poorly represented in genetic medicine research and artificial intelligence-based risk prediction tools used to calculate the chance of developing future disease.