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17 Mar 2009 14:41:44
Luton’s award-winning Kingsway
Health Centre was described as an exemplar of excellence by delegates at a
conference aimed at improving race equality in health services.
Professor Gurch Randhawa, Director of the Institute for Health Research at the University of Bedfordshire, was a keynote speaker at the conference and described real-life case-studies, including Kingsway Health Centre, where theory had been put into practice.
The Kingsway Health Centre recently won the Community Cohesion Award by Local Government Chronicle (LGC) and Health Service Journal (HSJ) for the transformation of Beech Hill Methodist church, in Bury Park, into a health centre which is joined with a community café and Methodist church. The judges were particularly impressed by the way that the Kingsway Health Centre focuses on all communities regardless of their age, gender, ethnicity, religion or language.
The Race Equality Foundation event, Mainstreaming race equality in health services, held in London on 10 March, aimed to provide delegates with a better understanding of what it means to ‘mainstream’ race equality. Around 60 delegates from the health, social care and voluntary sectors were shown evidence of what works and what needs to change, to help them meet the requirements of equalities duties and inspections.
The University
of Bedfordshire’s
Institute for Health Research carries out high-profile health inequalities
research, and Professor Randhawa was invited to speak about this at the
conference.
He said: “It was a great opportunity for me to speak about putting theory into practice and provided real-life examples of health inequalities being reduced as a result of our research findings.”
Following his talk, Professor Randhawa was invited by some of the delegates to talk to individual NHS Boards about mainstream services that will reduce inequalities.
The University of Bedfordshire’s Institute of Health Research is currently focusing on three core research areas that reflect its externally funded work and the topics on which Institute staff have published. One of those areas is Health Inequalities, which involves sociological and social policy work on health inequalities, with an emphasis on the health needs of the UK’s multi-ethnic and multi-faith population.
For further information about the Institute for Health Research please visit
Latest news» 2009» March» Putting theory into practice at health equality conference
