Trusts highlight scale of change needed to tackle race equality

NHS Providers has published a new report outlining the scale and scope of the challenge to improve racial equality across the NHS.

The Race 2.0 - Time for real change report highlights trust leaders' views on what constitutes good practice. Ten key priorities have been identified, including: building closer engagement with staff and community networks, fostering safe spaces, better education, focusing on personal values and behaviours, and openly challenging discrimination.

However, despite some areas of good practice, the new report also found that only four per cent of trust leaders said race equality was fully embedded as part of their board’s business. According to NHS Providers, there is anger and frustration over the slow pace of progress, despite the long-standing evidence of the racial injustice faced by their staff as well as by patients and service users.

More than six in ten trust leaders said they had progressed in building a more diverse board, and most leaders agreed this was not only a key priority for the board but a personal priority. However, just less than a third have incorporated race equality into their board assurance framework.

NHS Providers has also announced that it will be launching a new programme of support for trust leaders to drive meaningful change on race equality. The programme will feature events and resources to help challenge mindsets and encourage personal accountability, evidence-based case studies on high-impact interventions and peer learning sessions, as well as signposting to other sources of support.

Chris Hopson, chief executive of NHS Providers, said: "This report makes clear the scale of the challenge in front of us to achieve true race equality – both in trusts, and for NHS Providers as an organisation. We acknowledge with today's report, and through our own internal work over the last year, that progress has not gone anywhere near far or fast enough.

"It is unacceptable that, in aggregate, whole sections of our population suffer worse health outcomes as a result of their ethnicity. And whole sections of our staff are unable to give of their best as a result of how they are treated, due to their race. It is clear that white leaders like myself need to do significantly more to effect much greater change at a faster pace."