A new NHS Electronic Library for Ethnicity and Health has been launched to help fill gaps in knowledge of how treatments impact on ethnic minorities.
The Specialist Library for Ethnicity and Health (SLEH) was created by the UK Centre for Evidence in Ethnicity Health and Diversity (CEEHD), based at Warwick Medical School and the Mary Seacole Research Centre at De Montfort University, Leicester.
It is the newest addition to the NHS Knowledge Management Service and aims to be the central UK point of reference for research evidence and guidance on best practice relating to the health of an ethnically diverse population.
Professor Mark Johnson, co-director of CEEHD, told E-Health Insider: “In order to understand a person’s health needs, we need to understand ethnicity. There are differences in the way different people from different backgrounds react to different medicines. Before ethnicity was ignored, but SLEH will help everyone to treat ethic minorities better.”
The library incorporates the best electronically available evidence for improved practice in treating people from ethnic minorities. The collection covers all aspects of health care delivery and includes guidance on the design of health care services for diverse ethnic groups.
Professor Ala Szczepura, co-director of CEEHD, told EHI: “SLEH will assist the NHS and its affiliated bodies to tackle their obligations under the Race Relations Amendment Act and help reduce inequality. Practitioners need a resource that will give them access to relevant and effective clinical evidence related to ethnic needs.
“We will provide an indispensable free one-stop shop on the web for all healthcare professionals providing healthcare to an ethnically diverse population. It will be the quickest and easiest way to keep abreast of all the best evidence and information available, and will support your race equality strategy.”
The library has been built in response to the NHS Plan, launched in 2000 which stated: “The NHS will need to address local inequalities including access to services for black and ethnic communities.”
Surinder Sharma, NHS national director for equality & human rights told EHI: “The NHS aims to challenge discrimination and give individuals a greater say on how they are cared for. Up to ten per cent of the UK are from diverse backgrounds, soothe launch of SLEH, which looks at diversity is a great achievement.
“All individuals regardless of background should be able to access the NHS. Currently, black and ethnic minority patients say they get a less satisfactory service than others do, as GPs cannot tackle problems due to language and understanding barriers. We are getting better, 14% of the NHS employees are now from ethnic backgrounds – the SLEH will empower our workforce to treat patients from ethnic backgrounds much better.”
As well as clinical evidence on medication issues, the library will also include information on nationally recognised guidelines, health policies and strategies, studies, statistics and a dictionary of key phrases for clinicians to use when dealing with a person who cannot speak English, compiled with the assistance of the Department of Health.
Professor Szczepura said: “We aim to promote good practice in guidelines, management, service delivery and professional clinical models for improved health in multicultural and diverse communities in the UK.”
Professor Johnson added: “This specialist library is being developed by and for all health professionals working in this field in the UK and we would call on them to help shape the library to meet their needs.”
Sir Muir Gray, director of knowledge process and safety for NHS Connecting for Health said: “This library will not only be an invaluable tool bringing together the very best in current research evidence on ethnicity and health it will also highlight the significant gaps in our knowledge of how a range of treatments impact on ethnic minorities. This I hope will inspire new research and clinical trials that will help to close these gaps and provide even more high quality content for this new library.”
The library was launched by the health secretary, Patricia Hewitt who welcomed the move to more resources for ethnic minorities.
“As MP for Leicester West, which is such a diverse area, I have seen for myself the need for more clinical evidence relating to ethnic minorities. I have seen a number of my constituents and councillors in my constituency, who are south Asian, suffer from terrible heart disease and in some cases, premature death – where inconsolable families are being left without loved ones for inexplicable reasons.
“The SLEH is a superb innovation and now more people can be treated by doctors who have access to such a valuable resource in helping patients and clinicians to work together in treatment and illness prevention. In my constituency, we have set up mobile clinics in the communities where people who don’t speak fluent English can converse with staff who speak their own language, and the SLEH will help hospital staff do this on site.”
Hewitt added that the DH is striving to ensure that its workforce is as diverse as possible – but the SLEH will ensure that everyone has access to the resources they need to understand challenges presented to them and continue to guarantee the best value in health and health services to the patient.
Researchers believe the SLEH is pioneering work, which will become a benchmark for other countries to base similar libraries on.
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