Measuring our impact
Quantifying impact in the world of race equity is not a simple thing. Ethnic health inequality is affected by deeply ingrained systemic inequalities across housing, employment, justice, migration, and inter-generational trauma, to name just a handful of factors. Even so, in the short time the Observatory has been operating, we have seen major policy change, directed an unprecedented amount of research funding, and managed a huge amount of public and professional engagement across our workstreams.
We are interested in impact that goes beyond sometimes crude and dehumanising quantitative measures. We are committed to disrupting hierarchies of evidence, and this means learning from peoples experiences of and attitudes to healthcare, as much as numerical data. In that spirit, we measure our impact across five domains:
Driving Policy Change
We engage with ministers and other policymakers to ensure that evidence is digested and acted upon at the highest level and ensure that positive change on race equality is both long-term and irreversible.
Shaping Research
We identify gaps in the existing evidence base and, where we cannot fill those gaps with our own work, we work alongside other organisations and funders to help prioritise this research.
Influencing Leadership
We engage directly with regional and system leaders to drive meaningful change, and work with national policymakers to ensure that leaders are both properly equipped and sufficiently accountable.
Engaging the Public
We use diverse traditional, social, and community media channels to raise awareness and stimulate debates to bring understanding of ethnic health inequalities into mainstream discourse.
Creating Practical Resources
Producing resources and evidence to help improve decision making about populations and to empower communities to advocate for change.