Fighting health inequalities
Healthwatch Birmingham is committed to ensuring all the city’s diverse communities can access the best possible health and social care. Following our report into health inequalities in the Somali community, people from ethnic minority groups in Birmingham will benefit from improved engagement from health and social care services, greater involvement with the design and delivery of services and improved quality of care.
We engaged with health and social care services in the city to tackle the negative experiences, challenges and barriers people had told us about.
Improvements made include:
- Birmingham Women’s and Children’s NHS Foundation Trust has recruited a Patient and Families Ambassador for Inclusion and Diversity to ensure staff have access to the latest information on equalities and inclusion. The trust has also included Somali specific cultural awareness training as part of a wider Cultural Insight project.
- Black Country and West Birmingham NHS Clinical Commissioning Group has co-produced a cancer awareness video with people from the Somali community.
- University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust held focus groups with Romanian and Urdu/Mirpuri speaking communities to improve the health information that the trust shares with them.
- Birmingham City Council has begun running ESOL classes supporting women navigating public services, including healthcare.
- Birmingham Community Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust engaged participants from our study in its ‘Diabetes Project: Somali Community’ to gain better understanding of cultural factors which impact on diabetes management. The trust also involved participants in Allied Health Professionals (AHPs) Day 2021 activities informing young people about career opportunities within the NHS.
- The Royal Orthopaedic Hospital NHS Foundation Trust has translated PALS and complaints leaflets and posters into the top five languages spoken by patients.
We would like to thank all the community groups and individuals we engaged with in our initial report, and all the health and social care services who made important changes in response.