A presentation that I gave to the Blood & Transfusion Service conference on engaging black and minority ethnic communities in June 2016.

1. Dr Justin Varney
National Lead forAdult Health and Wellbeing
Justin.varney@phe.gov.uk
Engaging and
responding to ethnic
minority health
inequalities

2. About Public Health England
• We protect and improve the
nation's health and wellbeing, and
reduce health inequalities.
• Locally focussed
o 4 regions, 9 centres
o 8 Knowledge & Intelligence hubs
o Other local presence
• Key roles:
1. System leadership
2. Health protection
3. Local support
2 Engaging and responding to ethnic minority health inequalities

3. Overview
• Context of ethnic minority health inequalities
• Engagement
• On-going: Strategic partnership programme
• Project specific example:
• BME gay & bisexual men
• Dementia friendly communities and BME faith communities
• Reflections
• Looking forward
3 Engaging and responding to ethnic minority health inequalities

4. The scale of the challenge
• Life expectancy has increased
significantly but more of us live
longer in ill health
• Inequality gap has persisted
• In most disease conditions and
many lifestyle risk factors and
wider determinants of health ethnic
minority groups have poorer
outcomes
4 Engaging and responding to ethnic minority health inequalities

5. 5 Engaging and responding to ethnic minority health inequalities

6. Some of the challenges for BME communities
6 Engaging and responding to ethnic minority health inequalities
Challenges vary by ethnic group & generation
of migration
Infant mortality
Education
Employment
Domestic violence
Mental health
Smoking
Alcohol misuse
Obesity – child & adult
Prevalence of specific disease conditions e.g.
sickle cell disease, type 2 diabetes

7. Engagement
7
Image source: http://www.dse.vic.gov.au/effective-engagement/introduction-to-engagement/what-is-community-
engagement

8. National engagement
• DH/NHSE/PHE Strategic Partners Programme
• Funded set of 22 strategic partnerships with third
sector organisations and collaborations
• Undertake specific projects as well as provide advice
and consultation input to funding bodies
• Specific ethnicity focused partnerships:
• Partners who have undertaken specific ethnicity
related projects:
8 Engaging and responding to ethnic minority health inequalities

9. Internal engagement
• Mandatory E&D training and promotion of unconscious
bias training
• PHE BAME staff network & National Executive champion
for ethnicity
• PHE Staff diversity and inclusion awards launched in
2016 at House of Lords
• Internal communications focus on raising awareness of
cultural and faith events e.g Ramadan
9 Engaging and responding to ethnic minority health inequalities

10. BME Gay, Bisexual and other Men
who have sex with Men project
• Funded by MAC AIDS Foundation
• 18 month programme focused on
developing UK evidence base for
group & individual interventions with
BME MSM
• Engagement through delivery
partners, advisory group, Linkedin
group, media engagement
10 Engaging and responding to ethnic minority health inequalities

11. 11 Engaging and responding to ethnic minority health inequalities
Evaluation tool (De Montfort University)
Behavioural
Change
Interventions
Learning
Sets
E-learning
Module
BME LGBT
Image Bank
 Individual (Metro)
 Group (NAZ)
 Group (Quest)
 HIV + (NAZ)
 Faith (Faith Action)
 Race (REF)
 MSM (GMFA)
 Royal College of
General Practitioners
 NAZ  GMFA / NAZ
Advisory Board
BME MSM Project
Online
Platform

12. Reflections
• New conversation on intersectionality
for BME, LGBT & Faith communities
• BME is often short hand and fails to
get beyond largest ethnic group in the
room
• Latino visibility disabled by ONS
census categories
• Lack of understanding of multiple
dimensions of identity and impact
12 Engaging and responding to ethnic minority health inequalities

13. Dementia friends & ethnic faith communities
• Aim to engage ethnic faith communities in
Dementia friend campaign and consider how to
become more dementia inclusive
• Used a series of facilitated faith specific closed
round-tables with faith leaders
• Worked in concert with the strategic partners
programme (Faith Action/REF/AgeUK)
13 Engaging and responding to ethnic minority health inequalities

14. Reflections
• New approach for PHE and social
marketing to work through faith
communities
• Faith with ethnic communities can be a
powerful asset base to lever for
engagement but needs culturally
sensitive approaches
• Significant myths and some
challenging beliefs
14 Engaging and responding to ethnic minority health inequalities

15. Looking forward
• Increasing understanding of minorities within minorities
and differences between 1/2/3rd generation migrants
• BAME/BME is more than any single ethnic group and
although some barriers are common some are very
community specific and some big gaps in knowledge and
skills e.g. non-British white migrants
• Local government has strong local community
engagement but national engagement varies
• Millennial generation is the most ethnically blended and
therefore require us to revisit our constructs of ethnic
identity vs. place of birth
15 Engaging and responding to ethnic minority health inequalities

16. Dr Justin Varney
National Lead forAdult Health and Wellbeing
Justin.varney@phe.gov.uk
Engaging and
responding to ethnic
minority health
inequalities