Supporting named leads for health inequalities on NHS boards - NHS Race & Health Observatory report (1 December 2021)

Summary

In 2020, all NHS organisations were instructed to name a single executive board member as their senior responsible person for tackling health inequalities. Across the NHS, there should now be over 450 dedicated health equality named leads in healthcare organisations. This report published by the independent NHS Race & Health Observatory in collaboration with The King’s Fund sets out recommendations to help ensure senior NHS officials responsible for improving health inequalities are able to make a difference.

Content

The report makes five recommendations:

1. Create an induction offer for named Health Inequality leads, including role guides and examples of actions to be taken.
2. Use national and local action learning sets, which are already in place in some areas, for named Health Inequality leads.
3. Create a repository of high-quality evidence, knowledge resources, methods and regularly updated case studies that reflect the progress that’s being made.
4. Commit to a long-term policy focus and a cross-government strategy that places addressing inequalities at the heart of system development.
5. Introduce an enabling accountability framework that puts inequalities on an equal footing with the most important performance metrics and encourages innovation and experimentation to reflect the complex nature of inequalities.