NW London Race Equality Steering Group
In 2022 NHS North West London established a Race Steering Group (RSG) in recognition that structural racism acts as a significant barrier in health outcomes and therefore needs a strategic and targeted approach. The RSG has identified 3 priority work programmes to focus on and deliver improvements for the NW London population:
- Cancer disparities evidenced in ethnic minority communities within NW London, with a particular focus on late diagnosis and prevention. A multi-stakeholder task and finish group has been established and will take forward an improvement work programme over 2023/24 with a targeted co-productive approach with those communities affected.
- Following a ICB Cost of Living Summit in December 2022 working with the Voluntary Community Sector to understand and respond to the impact that the COL crisis has had on BME and other marginalized communities.
- A Focus on the local workforce through commissioning a qualitative review to understand and respond to the barriers experienced by BME staff in career progression to senior leadership positions (Director Level).
We continued our development as an Anchor Organisation. This focusses on using the resources within our system to re-invest in our communities, acknowledging that health outcomes are also impacted by wider determinants of health including housing and employment. For 2022, there has been a particular focus on employment with key areas being:
- Increase awareness of learning disability capabilities and associated challenges with NWL employers to help support diversity and inclusion objectives of the volunteering workforce.
- Develop a model that embeds volunteering, and the voluntary sector, to support our residents, primarily focusing on supporting communities to attend hospital appointments and avoiding readmissions.
- Looking at ways that the current recruitment system within the NHS can have a more outreach and targeted approach in terms of support with applications