Supporting Black History Month 2025

• Fair Futures: Regional Roadshows on Ethnicity Pay and Progression in Healthcare 

  The NHS Race and Health Observatory are hosting a series of  regional roadshows, taking place between 18 September and 27 November 2025. The sessions will bring together NHS and healthcare leaders, managers, EDI professionals, clinicians, researchers, and advocates to confront and address the current state of racial inequalities within the NHS workforce. Participants will engage in keynote presentations, panel discussions, and interactive workshops that focus on data trends, research, and effective strategies for improvement. Case studies will not only highlight the challenges, but also the actions that can be taken to make the NHS a fairer and more equitable workplace for individuals from all ethnic backgrounds.

• RCN London Black History Month event: Elevate, Accelerate and Celebrate Friday 10 October 2025, 10–4pm, London 

  Join the RCN London to support your professional growth, be inspired and celebrate Black History. 

• Celebrating Black History Month: an evening with Lord Adebowale CBE and Baroness Warsi 
  Tuesday 14 October 2025, 5:30-8:30pm, London   

  The NHS Confederation’s BME Leadership Network and the NHS Race and Health Observatory are hosting an evening celebration in London, featuring Lord Adebowale CBE and Baroness Warsi. They will share exclusive insights on what it means to be a pioneering leader from a BME background. Please note due to demand this event has sold out. 

Black History Month provides an opportunity for leaders to reaffirm commitment to building anti-racist organisations. 

• Adopt an anti-racist approach: make it a core part of conversations and actions.
• Address policies and structural issues: organisations must review and amend policies.
• Consider systemic issues: reflect on theories and identities to guide actions.
• Use data and monitor progress: recognise that data is only valuable when acted upon and ensure you meet your milestones.
• Use existing frameworks and models: follow the Race and Health Observatory’s Seven Anti-racism Principles, use NHS England’s Patient Care Race Equality Framework and the Institute for Race Relations tools.  
• Engage with your BME staff through networks: use the power of networks for collective action and actively listen to their challenges.
• Storytelling: share stories to humanise data and illustrate impacts.
• Implement and demonstrate a zero-tolerance policy on racism and bullying.
• Be accountable as a leader: also hold leaders to account.
• Look for disparities within the career development of your staff and work to close gaps through active career management policies.
• Support BME people in their leadership roles through standing your moral ground and refusing to collude with others' bad behaviour.
• Encourage more BME staff to become Freedom to Speak Up guardians.
• Ensure the diversity of your board reflects the diversity of your staff and service users.

The evidence

• The Messenger review (2022) highlighted the importance of equality, diversity and inclusion in leadership. In response, the NHS EDI improvement plan was published which states that “where diversity – across the whole workforce – is underpinned by inclusion, staff engagement, retention, innovation, and productivity improve.”
• The Workforce Race Equality Standard 2024 data shows a direct link between staff and patient satisfaction: improving staff experience is essential to improving services and although racism in the NHS is acknowledged, it remains a problem.
  • Key findings indicated that the proportion of BME people in the NHS workforce continues to rise. 28.6 per cent of the workforce across NHS trusts came from a BME background, an increase of 14 per cent on the previous year.
  • Although the percentage of representation of BME staff at very senior manager (VSM) level has increased from 11.2 per cent to 12.7 per cent since last year, the largest representation of BME staff is at Agenda for Change (AfC) band 5 at 42.3 per cent. This indicates that BME staff are finding it harder to progress than their white counterparts. At 80 per cent of NHS trusts, white applicants were significantly more likely than BME applicants to be appointed from shortlisting, a worsening of the figures by 4 percentage points since 2003. 
  • BME board membership has also reached its highest level of 16.5 per cent since the WRES was established. However, its growth has not kept up with the rise in BME staff across the NHS workforce.
  • For staff from a black background only 42.2 per cent believe their trust provides equal opportunities for career progression or promotion.  
  • 24.9 per cent of BME staff reported experiencing harassment, bullying or abuse from staff in the last 12 months, compared to 20.7 for white staff. This shows there is still a long way to go for NHS employers to facilitate true workplace equality for BME staff.
• The NHS England EDI improvement plan seeks to tackle these issues with high impact actions two and six:
  • High impact two requires NHS organisations to embed fair and inclusive recruitment processes and talent management strategies that target under-representation and lack of diversity.
  • High impact action six requires organisations to create an environment that eliminates the conditions in which bullying, discrimination, harassment and physical violence at work occur. To achieve this, organisations will be required to review data by protected characteristic, including BME and gender, and set reduction targets by March 2024 and implement a plan to improve the staff experience of these groups.

• Read this blog by Alexandra Ankrah, Keeping equality at the forefront of NHS changes. Alex reflects on the NHS changes and persistent inequalities highlighted in the WRES and WDES reports, as well as sharing her hopes for a future NHS that leaves no one behind.
• Explore this briefing, An investment not a drain - healthcare leaders' views on EDI in the NHS, published by the NHS Confederation highlighting perspectives from the service on the value of EDI to the NHS.
• Read the NHS Confederation's Shattered Hopes report which explores the experiences of BME leaders’ and challenges in breaking the glass ceiling in the NHS. It shares reflections on the lived experience of senior black and minority ethnic leaders in the NHS.
• Access the NHS Race and Health Observatory's Seven Anti-Racism Principles and Briefings. A simple, evidence-based model of anti-racism is a good start for healthcare organisations and systems to begin to think about the steps needed to help shift the dial on racial inequalities for our communities.
• Use NHS England's anti-racism framework: the Patient and carer race equality framework (PCREF), for all NHS mental health trusts and mental health service providers to embed across England. This mandatory framework will support trusts and providers on their journeys to becoming actively anti-racist organisations by ensuring that they are responsible for co-producing and implementing concrete actions to reduce racial inequalities within their services.
• Access the combatting racial discrimination against nurses, midwives and nursing associates resource, published by NHS England, NHS Confederation and the Nursing and Midwifery Council. It provides advice on the action you can take if you witness or experience racism. It also supports those in leadership roles to be inclusive leaders.

The NHS Race and Health Observatory which is hosted by the NHS Confederation and supported by NHS England, has been set up to investigate the impact of race and ethnicity on people’s health. It works to identify and tackle ethnic inequalities in health and care by facilitating research, making health policy recommendations and enabling long-term transformational change.