Access our support and expertise:
My name is Shahnaz Aziz and I’m Head of Equalities and Involvement at Health Innovation East Midlands HIEM, (formerly known as EMAHSN). We connect and collaborate with health and care, patients and the public, industry, and research to discover, test and spread the best health innovation for our communities. We encourage programmes to look at their work through an equality’s lens, and by doing so we hope to address and not widen inequalities. The voice of diverse patients and communities is imperative to this – otherwise innovations may not be acceptable, safe, or accessible for patients.
It’s Black History Month and on Wednesday 11 October 2023, from 10 am to 12.15 pm we’re looking forward to the second of our free "Innovation Insights", with a focus on “Race Disparity and Inclusive Innovations in Health”.
I’d like to share why a focus on racial disparities is important, and some of the proactive approaches we’re taking to support inclusive health innovations.
East Midlands is home to a vibrant mix of communities, living across urban, rural, and coastal landscapes. Our communities face challenges in terms of deprivation, accessible services, and worse than national average rates in several health indicators, such as the Indices of Multiple Deprivation, CVD, falls, infant mortality, mental health, respiratory conditions, medicines safety and optimisation.
14.3% of the East Midlands population are from ethnic minority communities, and this increases significantly in our cities, with Leicester’s ethnic minority population at 59%. In addition to socio economic deprivation, our ethnic minority populations are at greater risk of CVD, high blood pressure and stroke, obesity, certain cancers, sickle call and thalassemia. The NHS Race and Health Observatory is surfacing hard evidence and the need for greater focus and action on race disparity.
Professor Sir Michael Marmot Review, 10 Years On (2020), highlighted that sadly the health inequalities gap has widened in a decade. The links between poverty and poorer health outcomes is stark, along with the call for more targeted approaches, and the imperative to improve data collation and analysis to fully understand and target healthcare for specific ethnic minority groups must also remain a priority.
The emergence of new technologies, digital solutions, Artificial Intelligence, and new pathways in healthcare is happening at scale and pace. Patients and communities must be front and centre of healthcare planning to enable more acceptable, safe, and accessible services. Steps are now being taken to address racial bias in algorithms, healthcare measurements (including deterioration and skin health), AI and digital along with greater urgency to involve more people from Black and ethnic minority communities in research and innovation and real-world validation.
Ensuring we hear diverse patient voices is paramount in our work and we're striving for representation in terms of ethnicity, and other identities. Examples include hosting the East Midlands Patient Public Involvement Senate and the Expert People’s Panel (people from diverse communities who confirm and challenge our Equality Analysis process), as well as recruiting cohorts of people with particular lived experience in our programmes.
Step 5 – Enabling and supporting
HIEM is intensely working to address EDI and Health Inequalities and integrate the diverse voices of patients and communities into healthcare innovation and transformation to deliver more inclusive and accessible healthcare. These include:
Your collaboration and insights are invaluable in this journey, and we invite you to reach out for advice, guidance, or to share ideas for collaboration.
Contact: Shahnaz Aziz, Head of Inequalities and Involvement, HIEM This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
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