Like. Good evening, and welcome to this year's Black History Month lecture at the University of Oxford.
I'm Alexandra Gordon, co-chair with Daphne Cunningham, the university's BME staff network.
The network supports BME staff members of the university at all levels,
promoting BME staff representation in the university and serving as a critical
friend to the university as it works to combat racism and to achieve inclusivity.
The BMA staff network supports this annual event in Black History Month by inviting speakers
to present to a community and to the broader community on topics of relevance and concern.
I would invite BME staff members in the University of Oxford who are interested in joining the new stealth network
to look for our contacts and information on the web page of the Universities Equality and Diversity Unit.
That Web page also provides information for those who are not BME, but would like to connect with us as an ally.
This evening's programme will be formally opened by the University Registrar of Selection,
who will make a few remarks and introduce our speaker, Professor Kevin Fenton.
His talk will then be followed by a question and answer session to be moderated
by Mitchell is embedded from the university's equality and diversity unit.
We invite you to send in your questions for the Q&A session to the email address.
Oxford BME Staff Network one vote at Gmail dot com.
And to now, I will hand over to Jill Payton, who will introduce this evening's speaker.
Good evening, everybody. Delighted to be with you. We've.
The university has held a Black History Lecture Month lecture every year since 2008, and it's, of course,
the 34th year since Black History Month has been celebrated in this country, and this has been a particularly important year for for this movement.
We all of us know more than we probably want to know about the events that followed
on from the murder of George Floyd and the BLM protests across the globe.
The university has absolutely engaged in all sorts of ways in which it can address the ways in which these issues affect our own community,
and it makes me particularly delighted to be introducing Professor Kevin Fenton to give this this year's keynote lecture.
He has a wide ranging career, his starting from being a doctor in Jamaica, which created this lifelong interest in public health.
He studied for his doctorate in epidemiology in London and went on to a really eminent career which is still in absolute full flight,
both as an academic lecturing and and as a consultant, epidemiologist and not only holding.
Such Eminence goes on about to tell you about that.
He has been lauded for his his action on the wider stage in this country.
He was lauded twice. I think of this as one of the root 100 black achievers and influences.
And this year was ranked by power list as the second most influential black Briton.
So I rather wonder what you have to do to be the first most influential.
And so Kevin has also been playing a key role in the pandemic, which makes it particularly apt to this year.
Giving tonight's lecture and in particular at his reports,
highlighted health inequalities faced by minority black British people through the pandemic.
And so he's worked in a variety of public health health roles across government
and academia and has been on the Public Health England board since 2020.
He's currently regional director for London of the Office of Health Improvement and Disparities and regional director of Public
Health for NHS London and a statutory health adviser to the Mayor of London and on the Assembly before taking up those roles.
He's eight.
He was the key, the strategic director at the London borough of Southwark and senior adviser there for public health as the the role of Suffolk,
I think is just worth drawing a bit of attention to.
He led the council, the council's planning, regeneration, community engagement and public health portfolios,
and that was driving inclusive regeneration as it based community development and promoting health in all the policies of that council.
As the director of public health, he led the council's public health programmes,
worked across the council and the NHS to promote health in all policies.
All of these key things that we now think of as being absolutely natural and really, really important to do, and he was leading the way in Suffolk.
He has previously been the Public Health England's national director for health and wellbeing.
He led Public Health England's national prevention programmes, including screening for cancer and other conditions.
Health checks, public mental health, sexual and reproductive reproductive health.
And a range of wellbeing programmes for infants.
Use adults everybody. Older adults, too.
He established his health equity portfolio with a range of programmes and activities that focussed on
addressing the social determinants of health and promoting place based approaches to health improvement,
all of which makes him suitably qualified to have written those reports during our pandemic on health inequalities between 2005 and 2012.
Professor Fenton was the director of the National Centre for HIV AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD and TB Prevention,
but that organisation has an incredibly long acronym, which I won't repeat, and it was also at the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.
He was chief of the CDC's national syphilis elimination effort, and he's worked broadly in research,
epidemiology and the prevention of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases since 1995.
This is just such an amazing career. We're absolutely delighted that you've been able to join us this evening.
Professor Fenton, over to you.
Jillian, thank you so much for the wonderful introduction, and it's very humbling just listening to us and realising just how time has flown,
but also the privilege that I've had of serving in such diverse geographic locations on such interesting programmes.
But most importantly, contributing to improving health and accelerating health impact here at home and around the world.
So thank you for reminding me of that, but also thank you for the invitation to speak this evening.
This is my penultimate Black History Month engagement, and this year I've made it a particular mission to ensure that my voice,
along with the voice of many other black professionals,
are both seen and heard that we celebrate excellence, that we speak about the issues which are relevant to our communities,
that we ensure that we bring allies along with us, but also that we educate and empower.
And we use this month not just as a single moment in time where we have lots of activities and then move on.
But we use this time to reflect, to replenish, to regroup, to strategize and to think about how we can work together to create that more.
Just society that I know we're all committed to society and the privilege of giving this lecture.
And again, my sincere thanks for inviting me to do this lecture.
I'll be reflecting on our experiences of navigating the COVID pandemic to this point.
I'll be highlighting what we have learnt about inequalities. Many of those lessons were well entrenched and well known even before the pandemic,
but the pandemic has allowed us a time to both reacquaint yourselves of the nature of inequalities and why inequalities matter.
And perhaps they have unlocked new perspectives, new imperatives for us to begin thinking about how do we move forward as a legacy of this pandemic,
to strengthen our actions, to strengthen our commitments to truly addressing disparities and addressing those wider determinants of health?
So I'm just going to project my slides now just to get us started, and I'll be covering three key things today.
The first will be a reflection on the pandemic and some of the early work that I was
privileged to do on behalf of the then secretary of State and the chief medical officer,
really understanding disparities and inequalities related to COVID in the first wave of the pandemic.
I then I'm going to extrapolate some of the lessons from that first wave and how that has influenced our response as we've moved through waves too.
And now with three of the pandemic.
And then finally, I'd like to share with you some of the work we're doing in London because we have used these lessons,
we have to use these new insights.
We have used these new imperatives to fundamentally change how we work as a city and how we prioritised tackling health inequalities within our city,
working from the specific actions of equality, diversity and inclusion for all our staff straight through to world leading programmes.
Tackling inequalities, which we're delivering at scale for population health impact.
So and by reflecting a little bit on the journey that we're on in London and ways in which we want to have as a legacy of this pandemic,
both a renewed, empowered and stronger relationship with our communities and engaged,
passionate and focussed staff working across our health care systems,
as well as engaged and empowered partners who understand that together we need to work to address these inequalities.
So I begin by just reflecting a little bit on the nature of the pandemic that we're living through my partner.
I think you've already been introduced to, so I want to reflect on this anymore.
Apart from saying and to Jillian to the point, I made earlier that in a sense,
all of the diverse experiences which I've had throughout my career have in their own way prepared me and us for this moment.
But there's so many lessons that I'm learning now that I will be taking through throughout my career.
And this is, I think, a reflection of just the growth development that we all have as professionals and whatever
walk of life we are in that we are truly on a journey of learning and development.
And this is for me.
Certain parts of that as well, so as many of you are aware, we've had a fairly severe impact of the COVID 19 pandemic in the United Kingdom,
and we know there are millions of people who have become infected, millions who lives have been upturned as a result of this pandemic.
And I think none of us who have either been affected by or infected with COVID or have had our lives touched in some way,
whether it is people who have loved and lost, whether it's convincing a family member to get the vaccine,
whether it is encouraging those who we know and love or we work with to be COVID secure and safe.
This pandemic has touched us in ways which hitherto were unimaginable and which I'm sure
will leave an indelible mark on all of us as we emerge from the pandemic in the months,
weeks and months ahead. So this slide is this is a sense here as a pictorial representation of the past 22 months and recognising the challenges,
the pain, the difficulties, but the scientific discoveries, the new ways of working,
the innovation that have arisen from this pandemic, which I'm hoping that we'll be able to take both sides of this pandemic,
the good and the bad to help us to do better moving forward.
Now, one of the defining characteristics of the COVID pandemic has been inequalities,
and the inequalities have really been manifest as early as the first wave of the pandemic.
And if you take yourselves back to March and April last year, when we began to see images on the news,
whether the BBC or Sky News of people who were affected by the infection who are dying from the disease,
it became very apparent and very clear, very quickly that we began to see more brown and black people represented in the
COVID deaths than you would normally expect given or distribution in the population.
It was also clear from some of those news reports that the people who were dying from the disease or had severe disease were people who
were largely in the health and care sector or people who were in sectors that had them having a high probability of contact with others.
And it was this emerging reality and this real concern,
both from the medical fraternity as well as the wider community that prompted both the chief medical officer and the secretary of state at that time,
Matt Hancock, to ask Public Health England to do an initial rapid review of what was happening in
the first wave and to describe the disparities and risks and outcomes for COVID.
I was privileged to lead this work on behalf of Public Health England and in doing so was able to build upon my
experience as an infectious disease epidemiologist and someone who's worked in HIV for more than two and a half decades.
And I recognised right at the beginning that any enquiry into disparities in
risks and outcomes had to both combine the quantitative or epidemiological data.
So looking at routine clinical data, death and mortality statistics,
ICU statistics and in addition to begin to understand context, to begin to understand the stories,
to begin to understand the voices of communities that were affected by this
condition and to understand their experiences of going through the first wave,
but also their views on what could have been prevented and most importantly, what should be done moving forward.
So this work combined both epidemiological as well as social socio anthropological work we embarked upon over an eight week period.
I went a massive programme of public engagement on the first wave of the pandemic, engaging individuals,
members of the community, politicians, leaders of organisations both within almost every region in the country,
as well as the devolved nations using a variety of methods, including one to one interview,
focus group interviews, as well as large scale town hall events.
By virtue of the fact that we were in lockdown at the time, most of these were done using online formats,
which really facilitated us having large numbers, rapid engagement, as well as meaningful engagement online.
In total, we were able to interview more than 4000 people and engaged more than 4000 people in preparing
these reports and really captured some of those early stories of the first wave of the pandemic.
So the first step to show some of the key findings that were published in.
The report and certainly everything that we found in that those first investigations.
Remember, this is the first report from governments on disparities in risks and outcomes.
All of our findings have been replicated by the OAS. Other researchers that have been worked in, I've been working in this space.
And of course, the lived experiences as we've gone through successive waves of the pandemic.
So again, in the first wave,
it was clear that we were beginning to see differences appearing by age and sex with higher rates of severe disease and death occurring.
If you were older and women had a higher likelihood of being diagnosed with COVID in the first wave,
but men had a higher likelihood of dying from the disease,
the report highlighted the geographic clustering of infection and larger metropolitan areas,
especially those that had significant international connectivity, were particularly hard hit in the first wave of the pandemic.
And that in part explains why London's rates and the impact in wave one was so severe in the city.
But we saw this feature occur in other urban and suburban areas across the country as well.
Perhaps the only exception that we also observed was in the northwest,
where we began to see some of the early signals of the high incidence of disease and persistent
infection in that part of the country or epidemiological data confirm the links of deprivation.
So if you lived in more deprived parts of the country and in cities, you're far more likely to have severe disease and to die from the infection.
And of course, the reports highlighted the increased risks experienced by black,
Asian and minority ethnic individuals, especially Pakistani, Bangladeshi,
Black, African and Caribbean communities in wave one,
which had between a two to three fold increase the risk of death compared to their white counterparts.
So as I mentioned,
we combined the epidemiological data with the socio anthropological work using a variety of techniques to understand narratives and stories,
the lived experiences of people who were either experiencing the pandemic or responding to the pandemic and the qualitative interviews.
We really began to uncover four key areas which were important in determining why we were seeing the patterns that we were seeing.
First, it was clear that longstanding social and economic inequalities that had placed
communities at disadvantage and were actually accelerators of further disadvantage.
Once COVID arrived, and this really was a reflection on the social and living conditions that people had, the impact of income and poverty,
the ability of communities to be engaged and empowered,
and to be active participants in their health and protecting themselves and vulnerabilities in vulnerable groups.
For example, the homeless migrant populations,
undocumented populations which were less likely to engage with national messages less likely to engage with services.
We learnt from the qualitative interviews about the importance of factors which increase risk to exposure to COVID,
especially the Real-World realities of staff who were working in frontline roles not only in the health and care sector,
but in the transportation sector, in the construction industry.
Those who took care of us in the supermarkets while we were all in lockdown, lifting out and working with members of the public.
We also began to understand in those early interviews the importance of overcrowded
housing and multi-generational households and how these factors clustered by deprivation,
by geography, by social and economic, as well as cultural groups as well.
Qualitative work also helps us to understand not only that the risk of developing COVID was a function of being exposed to the virus,
but there were factors that increase the risk of complications and death,
including your ability to navigate the health care system if you are unwell in order to be seen in a hospital for your coverage.
It also had uncovered the stories of people who perhaps were coming into the
pandemic with undiagnosed or poorly managed multiple long term conditions,
and how that had a detrimental impact on severe disease and death.
And we also learnt absolute clarity about the impact on the intersection of poor mental health and people with severe and enduring mental
illness and their experiences of navigating the first wave of the pandemic and the difficulties they had both been diagnosed and being managed,
and to manage those comorbidities.
Finally, the report was the first in from government, which really reflected on some of the wider structural issues that influenced our risk,
including racism, discrimination, stigma, fear and mistrust.
And these were important stories for communities to get across the sense that actually many of the preventive messages,
the early messaging, the images that were used in the first wave of the pandemic didn't really speak to them.
They were only in English. They didn't use the channels that communities would use.
They didn't use the key community leaders who are trusted voices in their own communities
to help people to understand the nature of the threat and what needed to be done.
And we uncovered real issues related to steer stigma of being diagnosed with COVID and how that impacted on local communities and local networks.
And, of course, fear and stigma of going into the hospital with presumed COVID because of fear of death from the disease.
There are a lot of real issues that we're able to uncover using this mixed method approach.
Another report a year ago, more than a year ago,
highlighted seven key areas where we needed to act if we were going to limit the impact of both COVID in its first wave,
as well as subsequent waves of the pandemic. And we were deliberate in identifying seven key areas for action,
in part because of the nature of the speed of response that we needed and we wanted to focus all system leaders,
whether working nationally, regionally, locally in the community on a few things which would be high impact that would be deliverable,
feasible, acceptable and would have impacts if implemented.
So the seven recommendations are highlighted here. I won't go through these in any great detail,
but just to say that they really focus on the importance of strengthening our data collection
and recording so we could better characterise the impacts of COVID on our communities,
not only their clinical characteristics, but capturing more of the social and economic and contextual realities of our communities.
We call for new research, which really had communities at the heart of both asking the questions, framing the issues,
helping with the methodology, disseminating the results and being part of translating that evidence into practise.
We asked for more accountability from health and care providers to ensure that they held themselves to account, to protect their staff,
to engage with communities and to ensure that their programmes and policies were geared towards tackling these inequalities.
We found and really made recommendations on cultural competency, both in terms of risk assessments, the messages that were being given out to COVID,
as well as wider preventative programmes which were dealing with the multiple long term conditions,
as well as other Real-World realities of communities.
And this cultural competence is important because it moves us from a discussion on being culturally sensitive to a more proactive
stance where we are working with and alongside communities to develop and shape and implement and evaluate the work that we're doing,
so that those interventions actually meet the needs of the communities that we're told to serve.
And finally, we ask that as we emerge from the pandemic and we think about recovery,
that we have equity at the forefront of our minds with that with with our work on recovery.
So there have been a lot of things that have happened over the last year,
and we won't have time today to talk about just the range of activities that have taken place in response to not only this report,
but other reports from awareness of the researchers about the nature, scale and profound depth of the inequalities that is being seen.
And some of the interventions are highlighted here from resources that have been delivered by governments
to better engage and to build capacity in communities to build much more culturally competent,
sustained and community engaged responses to the pandemic.
We fundamentally changed communications on COVID, and many of you are aware of the diversity of images of languages,
the channels which are now used to engage with members of our diverse communities.
We have built stronger links with faith communities, with community organisations both on coffee, but more importantly, on wider health issues.
And in London and many regions across the country. Local authorities, the NHS businesses, regional governments have prioritised equity,
have developed new governance to lead on equity and are holding themselves to a higher account for ensuring that the data,
the programmes, the people, the public are engaged in this journey on tackling these inequalities.
And finally, we've seen over the last year where public health bodies,
including the Association of Directors of Public Health and the Faculty of Public Health,
have come out strongly to denounce racism and to think of and encourage us to think of racism as a
public health crisis and to use our skills in public health to bring to bear to addressing these issues.
So again, many interventions that have taken place over the last year, year and a half,
leading us to a much more equitable, much more culturally competent response to the COVID pandemic.
So as I said, as we've gone through the successive waves of the pandemic, we've seen this disproportionality appear.
Now the good news is that the patterns of the disproportionality have changed over time,
in part because communities have adopted new behaviours to protect themselves,
in part because as we've gone through subsequent waves, the nature of exposure to some communities have been differential and that in
turn has an impact on their experience of subsequent waves of the pandemic.
Certainly in London, we know that, for example,
black Caribbean and black African communities were severely and disproportionately affected in wave one and Wave two,
we saw change where our Asian communities in London, South Asian, especially Pakistan and Bangladeshi communities,
bore disproportionate burden of cases and deaths in the second wave.
Whereas in Wave three, which began in the spring summer of this year,
we began to see far more young white British individuals being affected as we moved into and began experiencing the delta waves of infection.
And we see how these have changed over time and again.
This is looking at some of the age standardised death rates for men by ethnic group in waves one compared with two.
And you can see, as I mentioned in Wave one, nearly all of the minority ethnic groups for men,
we saw an increased risk of death as we moved into Wave two.
We saw persistence of that increased risk in Bangladeshi and Pakistani communities,
whereas we saw less or equal to white British, the risks in other ethnic groups.
So we did see the impacts of both our interventions,
as well as how the second wave of the pandemic evolved and how that differentially impacted different communities.
And we looked so much in past year, right? So studies have come which are really highlighted and helped us to understand the nature of
occupational risk and the nature of why in so many of these occupations that were at high risk.
We saw this disproportionate burden amongst black, Asian and minority ethnic communities.
And this slide shows data from the awareness that shows the proportion of men working in the highest death rate occupations who are ethnic minorities.
And you can see more than half of our taxi drivers, cab drivers, drivers and chauffeurs are BAMC.
We see more than a third of people working in catering and chefs,
those who are working in security guards and other related occupations who are black, Asian and minority ethnic communities.
So this increased risk through occupation would in turn,
have had a disproportionate impact on our communities, and that's why we called for better protection in.
In the workplace, that's a focus on risk assessments and ensuring that those who are especially at risk have the protections that they need.
Now this relationship of ethnicity and COVID is a complex one and interacts with deprivation,
and that is really important to understand because not only did it affect who got infected, who had severe disease and who died from the infection.
But as we move through the course of the pandemic,
we've seen this interaction between ethnicity and deprivation play out in the effectiveness of or testing and contact tracing programme,
but also playing out in the uptake and delivery of the vaccine programme as well.
And this slide just shows on the left hand side that as we move towards more deprived parts of the country
that you see far more engagement and far more cases occurring within black Asian minority ethnic individuals.
Whereas as you move to the least deprived parts of the country, then you begin to see a lower impact on these ethnic groups and we see these
patterns operating differently and differentially across different ethnic groups.
And I talk about this interaction because it is pretty it has influenced our vaccine programme and vaccine uptake.
We understood because of our experience in ways, one in waves, two that we, for example, in London, needed to start earlier,
even before the first vaccine was delivered to do work with our communities around vaccine hesitancy,
mobilisation around vaccines and education, around vaccines.
And in fact, we established a vaccine equity group before the vaccine.
The first vaccine was given because we could see these patterns of inequalities playing themselves out over time.
And this slide just highlights where we were at the beginning of the year with levels of hesitancy by ethnic groups.
And this is highlighting the portion of individuals in an ethnic group who
said that they were unlikely or very unlikely to receive their COVID vaccine.
So we began with this huge variation across the different ethnic groups,
and we've been working diligently over the past year to address this and in
this process have continued to learn about or work on tackling inequalities.
A core strategy for us in London has been developing a particular approach in the city that
was both holistic and comprehensive to address vaccine hesitancy in the centre of this slide.
It really shows the logic that we have pursued an understanding that the motivation
to get vaccinated is a function of what people think and feel about the vaccine,
as well as social processes, how they're influenced by wider leadership, who they're speaking to, the networks that they're in.
We need to look at the practical access of vaccination as well, who and where our vaccination sites located.
Are they confident? Are they welcoming? Are they open to different communities?
And to ensure that we're looking at both the practical aspects of vaccination delivery, as well as engaging communities in a comprehensive way?
So over the past year, in all of these demands and coloured boxes, we've worked on working with communities,
for example, thinking about influencing vaccine policy and ensuring that it was again culturally competent,
recognising and working with chances to understand the historical context and why trust in institutions and
government might be low and how we work together to overcome that in order to have the lifesaving vaccine.
We did a lot of work to build health literacy, challenge health beliefs, working with parents and peers and key influencers within our communities.
And we've done so much on access registration and the Phillipson approach in London,
which we call the hyperlocal approach to vaccine delivery, where we used data overlaying the demographic profile incidence of disease,
what we know about vaccine uptake to target where we place for vaccine outreach sites, where we knock on doors,
where we work with local community organisations to mobilise communities in order to get us to a better place again.
Learning and implementing our programmes have been a key part of our work over the past year on vaccines and again,
extracting those lessons are important.
So here we just highlight some of the things that we have done that we're particularly proud of engaging targeted groups,
really focussing on community competence and community appropriate,
acceptable ways of engaging, using different spokesperson Q leaders weather and sharing resources across the city and with other regions.
We've held. Hundreds of vaccine confidence events for Londoners listening to some tough truths,
sometimes being open to criticism and being open to being challenged, but at the same time, sticking to the evidence.
Listening to the facts, sharing the facts and building that confidence through truth, consistency and time.
We've built capacity in communities, developing a bureau of community speakers and public health ambassadors,
people who are not public health trained or health trained,
who understand and can speak to members about the vaccine and engage them in access and addressing fears.
We've developed a network of community champions which have also helped us not just with the vaccine,
but as we've moved through subsequent waves of the pandemic. So again, new assets, new ways of working that we've developed in the city.
Now we're making significant progress and as many of you know, or rates in London are still lower than the rest of the country,
but we know that that's the London characteristic for all vaccination programmes.
London generally has lower vaccination rates.
But I, for one, I'm so pleased and thankful to our communities for the journey that we've been on together over the past year,
where we started with very high rates of hesitancy and poor uptake of the vaccine.
So a point now where in terms of double vaccination and the resilience that we have in the city, a combination of both of our vaccination,
as well as natural exposure to the virus, we know that we have a robust and substantial population immunity to the virus.
So we know that we're on this journey. There's more to go, but this is the kind of work done in partnership with communities as what we're learning.
So again, data there on vaccine hesitancy.
I'm going to move now to the final part of the talk, which is really just extracting some lessons from all of these experiences.
And I look forward to your questions in a few minutes. You know, I've often asked what I've taken away from these experiences as well,
apart from trying to get sleep whenever you can and taking breaks and getting rest.
There are a number of things that I think we're all taking away with us in it.
Nothing prepares you for a once in a generation or multiple generation events such as what we're going through now.
But the practising and the skills and the drills and the capacity and the training that we have as public health professionals,
the exercises that we've been through have prepared us for this moment and it
has been amazing to see how we have been able to step up to the challenges,
but how we have been agile learning almost on a daily basis, partnering differently,
working differently, bringing in new capabilities to help us to get the job done.
And that has been a fantastic legacy and reality of our pandemic response.
It's been complex at any given time or dealing with the infection.
What's happening in the NHS, respecting social care government policy, what's happening from, you know,
local political leaders where communities are pushing back in an environment which continues to change on a regular on a daily basis and
learning to live with that complexity and to find your own individual and organisational resilience within that complexity has been key.
Clearly, a lot of what we've done is working closely with politicians of all stripes, backgrounds at all levels,
from local councillors straight to the prime minister and being able to stand in the truth of the evidence,
but recognise that the evidence is going to be only one of a series of inputs
that politicians are going to use to make decisions and at the same time,
widening the net of partners that we have engaged in this response problems that I think will now be with us for life.
So whether it's the business sector or the faith sector or working with groups which had hitherto been hidden,
which we have brought into our partnerships and continues to create a new and dynamic ecosystem of partnership within our city.
Communication is key. You know, whether it's the No10 briefings, whether it is the town hall events,
whether it is a one on one engagements that we do with people to address issues and concerns around the vaccine.
I don't think that we've done as much communication in as many channels and
forums and in as many ways as I've ever done in my entire public health career.
And for all of us going through this and we've learnt new skills,
but we've also valued the importance not just of transmitting information but of listening as well and becoming active listeners for communities,
for partners, for politicians to understand not only what is being said, but what is being felt as well.
And. Turning that into our response and finally learning to take care of ourselves,
our people have been a really key part of what we've had to do over the past year, and I'd be happy to speak a little bit more on that as well.
Now, you know, we've been taking this through in so many ways.
In London,
I want to end by just giving a sense of how do you make sense of this traumatic experience that we've been through to do things differently,
to have different outcomes? I think it's clear that, you know, not only are we dealing with inequalities from COVID,
but very quickly we're going to have to face the realities of other health inequalities,
which we're going to grapple with, which pre-existing the pandemic, which are already reality today.
And here I've just highlighted from the Race and Health Observatory Observatory some of the data related to other inequalities,
which are longstanding and pervasive and which are persistent.
And as we emerge from this, we need to find both the voice, the advocacy, the evidence,
the programmes to be taking a much more holistic approach to addressing needs.
One of the most poignant bits of feedback that we've got from changes as we've been engaging is you've never engaged us before.
Why are you engaging us now? And if we take this vaccine, are you going to run and leave us?
Or are you going to stay with us to finish this job of helping us to be healthier and
helping us to improve our well-being and tackling these long standing inequalities?
And that, for me, has been a fundamental promise that I've made to the citizens in London that what
we're building today will be a part of the legacy of doing things differently.
And you can see, by the way, the city itself is approaching recovery.
So one of our recommendations was that equity should be at the forefront of recovery.
And clearly, this is not just going to be an economic recovery,
but we have a chance in our recovery efforts to integrate all the other pressures that and realities that we're dealing with now.
So in London, we're looking at London recovery through the grand challenge process of integrating the environment
with a Green New Deal for Londoners thinking about the built environment and high streets for all,
really thinking about supporting our young people who have been so hard hit by this pandemic.
Looking at issues related to our health priorities, mental health,
obesity and ensuring showing that there's digital access for all and using these great
challenges from the city to ensure that we're focussing on building collaboration,
focussing on sustainability, tackling inequalities and ensuring that health and wellbeing is at the centre of everything we're doing.
And the driver here is that not only do we build back economically, but we build back a legacy of a healthier,
engaged workforce and pockets that in turn makes us much more productive as a global city.
And in unpacking this, we're looking at actions, which operates at different levels and which are now governed by new bodies in London,
including a new London health equity group which reports into the London Health Board.
We focus on strengthening system capacity policy response to programmes looking at data key indicators that we're tracking,
but also the ways in which we're polling and engaging Londoners on issues of inequality,
working on the workforce and thinking about how we work with the NHS and local governments,
universities and businesses as anchor institutions in place to help to improve the life chances and life course of our residents.
And of course, as I mentioned earlier, continuing with our efforts to support and engage communities,
building upon the lessons that we've learnt so colleagues, I'm going to bring my reflections to a close.
Now, I've really wanted to just take you through, in a sense, my experience of going through the pandemic and to perhaps share a bit of the story.
And there are many stories of this pandemic.
You all have your own stories, and perhaps this is a glimpse into a part of my story to extrapolate from that story,
the lessons that we've learnt and why addressing inequalities was not just a thing of the first wave,
but it has been with us throughout the course of the pandemic and will continue to be so as we progressed through this new phase.
And then to transition into how do we because we now know better, do better.
Thank you very much. Thank you for that.
But by way of confusion on behalf of the BME staff network, I would like to conclude this evening's event with it with fish tanks.
And we are very grateful to Gillette and the university's equality and diversity unit for their continued support to this, this annual lecture.
And in addition, we express our gratitude to Richard Chinese Ambassador,
the ITU for so ably moderating the Q&A today a little and said Imagine such talks for the logistical and
technical support and to our colleagues and academic colleagues across the university who supported this event.
Most importantly, of course,
we are very grateful to Kevin Fenton for speaking to us this evening and for sharing is particularly timely insights on our experience and racial
disparities and disproportionality arising from the virus pandemic in London in particular and the forward challenges in public health and beyond.
And and finally, may I thank you our audience for your participation this evening.
And I think I speak for all of us in observing that we have all been enriched by this exchange.
Thank you and good evening.