The Role of Ethnic Monitoring in Mainstreaming Race Equality and the Modernization of the NHS: A Neglected Agenda?

The Department of Health has adopted mainstreaming as a fundamental principle of its race and equal opportunities work in service delivery, workforce policies and the tackling of institutional racism. A logical and necessary extension of this approach is to mainstream ethnic monitoring, a need supported by an increasing number of government departments, agencies and independent research bodies and implicitly recognized in the equalities framework for the NHS. However, the sparseness of proposals to improve the information base appears as the weak link in the Department's race equality agenda, reflecting a highly fragmented and piecemeal approach to ethnic monitoring in the past. Much of the information collected in the NHS and social care settings either does not record ethnic group or yields data of such poor quality and completeness that they are not used. Monitoring must be made relevant to the needs of those collecting the data as well as for central reporting, so that usage itself contributes to improvements in quality. Guidance and training covering the principles of monitoring, the process of collection and the use of the data generated should be a key component in implementing the process. Making ethnic monitoring a high political priority and locating it at the centre of race equality policies is needed to ensure that the huge potential it offers in the modernization of the NHS is fulfilled.