The NHS is committed to reducing healthcare inequalities and delivering equitable access, excellent experiences and optimal outcomes for everybody. To achieve this, they need to understand and respond to the needs of all the communities they serve. High quality data that helps them understand who is experiencing health inequalities is critical to this.

This plan sets out targeted actions to strengthen the quality, consistency and completeness of ethnicity data recording. It supports NHS organisations to identify and act on issues that affect their ability to record and analyse ethnic health inequalities data.

Access the full plan here

There was much controversy at the start of the year over the rumoured closure of  Sickle Cell Day Unit at the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel, London. A  petition was formed to urge the Royal London Hospital and governing health authorities to maintain and adequately fund the Sickle Cell Day Unit, securing its services for future generations.

https://www.change.org/p/prevent-closure-of-the-sickle-cell-day-unit 

The organisers argue that the closing of this facility would have a devastating impact on the hundreds of families who rely on its specialised services.  Following sustained campaigning by youth worker Delo Biyelo, with later support from organisations like ACLT charity, the campaign was even covered by ITV News 

But the Royal London Hospital sees the situation differently.   Barts Health NHS Trust put out this statement

“We recognise the strength of feeling and support that our same day emergency care (SDEC) pilot has received, which is a testament to the hard work of our teams.Funded by the North East London integrated care board, it involved testing an alternative route for treating emergency patients with sickle cell disease who were experiencing acute pain. This was alongside the normal route of being treated through our A&E. We did this so we could evaluate its impact and plan more robustly for future services. The pilot ran from September 2025 to the end of January.  There is no change to the way we manage patients with sickle cell disease, and our Haematology Day Unit remains open for all our elective transfusion therapies.  Patients with sickle cell disease will continue to receive specialist-led care at our hospital.  
We are committed to improving pathways for the management of pain in patients with sickle cell disease, both acute and chronic, and will continue to welcome input into service design. Our team are in the process of collecting data and feedback on how the pathway was used, to share with the ICB and help inform future funding plans.”